Building Safety

Debate between Robert Neill and Robert Jenrick

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I wrote to the Secretary of State on Monday about the position of my constituents in Northpoint in Bromley. I welcome his announcement. Will he confirm that the establishment of the protection board ought to and must be used so that people such as my constituents—who have had to do this—may avoid the rigmarole of commissioning a building survey to prove eligibility for the fund and then applying for funding from the pre-application fund, the portal for which was not live at the beginning of the week? We need to cut through that immediately.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I have corresponded and spoken about the issue in his constituency. As I said in my correspondence to him, I encourage the building owners in his constituency to apply to the fund. It will be open on 12 September and we will be handling the applications on a rolling basis. In fact, it will also be possible to get a refund retrospectively, so they could get on with the work immediately and seek the funding at a later date.

My hon. Friend asked me previously about buildings that may have a mix of ACM cladding and other forms of cladding. Public money will obviously be spent for the remediation of the dangerous ACM cladding, but if it is proven that it is impossible to remediate the ACM cladding without taking off the other forms of cladding, it may well be possible to use public money to fund that as well. I hope my hon. Friend’s constituents will put in an application as soon as possible and that we can move forward at pace in his constituency.