Building Safety and Resilience

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to address the House on the critical issue of building safety. Before I get to the meat of my speech, may I congratulate the maiden speakers we have heard today? They have taken us on a tour of Britain—or, perhaps more particularly, a tour of England—that would send the newly reconvened all-party parliamentary group on publishing into an excitable frenzy; I hope some of those words find themselves in the publications of the future. I particularly congratulate the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) on his maiden speech, and thank him and his brother for their service to his constituents and to those imperilled by the risk of fire.

The cladding and fire safety scandal that underpins this discussion is a national issue that impacts residents in almost every constituency across the country, but which does so highly unevenly, with different geographical intensities, and which, for those who are unaffected and unimpacted, can go almost entirely unobserved. For those who do feel the direct effects, the results can be devastating. My constituents have made this point to me in the most vivid terms. To find yourself resident in a building caught up in the cladding and fire safety scandal is to find yourself locked in a bewildering series of revelations and disclosures beyond your control and often beyond your understanding, each one of which undermines your confidence in the safety of the place in your life and the life of your family that should be a sanctuary: your home.

Unlike more urban areas, my constituency of Surrey Heath has not been especially hard hit by the scandal, but neither has it escaped it all together. My constituents living in the North Court development in Camberley, our main market town, have lived through the trauma of finding that their building poses serious risks to them from unsafe, flammable cladding and fire safety failures that have been present in the building from the point of construction more than 15 years ago—risks and threats that should never have been there, covered up by plasterboard and panelling, and which were only brought to the surface in the months and years following the tragic loss of 72 lives in the Grenfell Tower fire. Despite the efforts of inquiries to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated, according to figures that I have seen, there remain in the UK today 4,630 buildings with unsafe cladding. Of those, 3,287 are awaiting remediation; and of those, 2,331 have yet to even start the process. According to the building safety register, that leaves around half a million lives still at risk.

We must also remember that the Government’s figures relate only to mid and high-rise blocks—those above 11 metres in height. We have no data to understand how the building safety crisis is affecting many tens, hundreds and thousands of blocks that do not meet that height threshold. Clear and urgent questions remain about if, when and how the Government plan to gather and publish that data. We cannot hope to resolve the issue if we have no clear or quantifiable grasp of the scale and scope of the problem. Where action is taken, it must be robust, efficient and informed by the best expertise available. Given the potentially fatal consequences of inaction, maintaining the highest standards in future building safety measures is essential.

Recent disputes, such as that between Barratt Homes and the residents of Royal Artillery Quays over combustible panels left on escape stairwells during remediation works, raise serious questions about whether current approaches to remediation are sufficiently robust. We must also question the capacity of the new Building Safety Regulator to investigate such issues. A recent report states that, as of February 2024, the regulator had only 10 regulatory leads and eight caseworkers—a situation described as “chronically under-resourced”.

Residents of buildings undergoing remediation works have urgent questions and concerns that need to be addressed. I have been contacted by many constituents sharing their distress and anxiety about a process that leaves them feeling powerless and prisoners in their own homes. As I speak here today, the residents of North Court are living amid scaffolding, plastic sheeting and constant noise while the flammable cladding that once wrapped their building is removed. The recent fire in Dagenham underscores the risks associated with such projects, and we cannot allow a repeat of that to occur. Residents across the country are not unaware of these risks, and live with the constant uncertainty that they pose.

The House should commend the extensive legal reforms enacted after Grenfell, including the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, the Building Safety Act 2022, and the establishment of the Building Safety Regulator. However, I have yet to see the regulator actively enforce the regulations through prosecutions. We cannot allow, nor can we afford, laws passed in this place to go unenforced, whether owing to a lack of political will, insufficient funding for regulators or poorly drafted legislation. As I have already mentioned, the victims and families of Grenfell have not yet received the justice they deserve, and I cannot allow my constituents to suffer a similar injustice. I look forward to seeing those who violate regulations in the residential property sector held accountable without further delay.

While time is of the essence, I want to ask the Minister and, indeed, the Government to take a few key actions. First, I ask them to act with “more haste, less speed” to ensure that safety is not compromised in the name of expediency. The relevant data must be gathered and published, regulations must be robust, and regulators must be properly resourced. Secondly, I ask them to convene a building safety crisis taskforce to help shape the resolution of the building safety crisis, drawing together industry leaders, residents, local and national politicians, civil servants and third sector stakeholders. Thirdly, I ask them to undertake a full and holistic review of current and proposed building safety regulations in order to understand what works, how those regulations interact with one another, and the enforceability—and the willingness to enforce—the regulations currently written into law. The safety of my constituents in North Court, and that of others throughout the country, depends on such action.