Building Safety Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is happening now on a very large scale. This is what one of my major social landlords said about remedial works:

“The cost of this…is in the tens of millions of pounds and has led to us having to significantly reduce our development plans and slow down some of the investment work that we had planned to complete in our existing homes. If we were to try and fund the costs of this work for our leaseholders…this would effectively mean that social housing rents were being used to subsidise costs for leaseholders.”

It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely. We have those immediate problems with the costs that are being borne by social housing providers.

If, in the end, the Government cannot get the money from the industry on a voluntary basis, and the Treasury is saying that there will be no extra money from the central pot and no extra taxation or levy, then there will be a cut to the Department’s own programmes, which effectively means the social housing programmes for the future. That will be another cutback to the badly needed homes that should otherwise be built. I say to the Minister and to my own Front-Bench colleagues that, in the end, these are the principles that we have to achieve: no costs on leaseholders, no costs on tenants, and no cuts to the future social house building programme either.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

Scintillating they may not be, but it is still a pleasure to respond for the Opposition to the remaining proceedings on consideration. I will first deal briefly with several of the non-Government amendments selected, before taking the opportunity to ask the Minister several specific questions relating to Government new clause 19, new schedule 1 and various other amendments relating to special measures and protections against forfeiture. I hope he is able to answer at least some of them.

New clause 1, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who sadly cannot be in her place today because she has contracted covid, is a straightforward amendment that would place on the Secretary of State an obligation to review the effects of behaviour in the construction industry that have a negative impact on building safety, such as contract terms and payment practices that prioritise speed and low-cost solutions, and to report findings to this House. We support the new clause fully and urge the Government to give it due consideration.

New clause 18, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), would establish minimum standards for property flood resilience measures in new-build homes. In response to my hon. Friend last week, the Secretary of State made it clear that “more could be done” on this issue. I hope my hon. Friend gets a chance to make her case in more detail in due course, and that the Minister will give serious consideration to her new clause and to what might be done through future planning legislation to drive up standards when it comes to flood mitigation and resilience.

New clause 15, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), would extent the electrical safety inspection duties that currently apply in the private sector to social landlords. It is straightforward and we believe it warrants support.

New clause 16 would extend the same duties to leaseholders. Although we do not want extra burdens to be placed on leaseholder-occupiers—those who sub-let are of course required to have the relevant certification anyway—and we do want further assurances that the provision would not duplicate powers and duties that the Bill confers on the building safety manager, we support in principle steps to ensure the safety of electrical installations in high-rise buildings and to reduce the risk of fire spreading between flats.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is a logical and fair man, and he will appreciate that there is an anomaly here. If a leaseholder rents out their property, as we have heard some are forced to do, they will be a private landlord and will be obliged to carry out these checks, but they will not be if they are living in the property themselves. In the name of safety, there has to be consistency. Not only landlords of high-rise blocks but social landlords and resident leaseholders need to do this, and the cost is estimated to be about £30 a year per flat.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Just a minute of happiness—very good.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will speak briefly to new clauses 15 and 16, which are in my name and which relate to electrical safety. They seek to extend the requirement for five-yearly checks on electrical equipment to resident leaseholders and to social landlords, where these already apply and in fact apply more widely than just to high-rise residential buildings and private landlords.



We have quite rightly spent a lot of time this afternoon talking about the effects on leaseholders, and we have strayed into other territory and exposed other deficiencies in the Bill in relation to the requirements for social landlords and tenants, what types of building are covered and, indeed, as we heard from the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), how certain types of buildings now being constructed are still being constructed with many of those faults.

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[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 73, tabled my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). The Bill renames “private approved inspectors” “building control approvers”. Not just amendment 73 has touched on the issue; other Members have done that through other new clauses and amendments. I wish to express my support for the Fire Brigades Union’s opposition to those private inspectors, which, as it argues, undermine professional local authority building control and weaken building safety regulation.

Amendment 1 is about the Building Safety Regulator. Again, I share the alarm expressed by the Fire Brigades Union that the Building Safety Regulator would be permitted to seek private sector involvement if the fire authority cannot assist. Surely it is obvious why private firms cannot be given licence to sign off on fire safety matters relating to higher-risk buildings. Fire safety is a matter for professional firefighters, not profiteers, and it is not clear how the new Building Regulations Advisory Committee will be constituted. I would be grateful if the Minister could say more about that.

Many of us would like to see the Government re-establish a statutory fire safety advisory body, with guaranteed representation for trade unions and residents. As the Bill progresses, I would like to see legislation and provision that apply to all residential buildings above 11 metres in height, an idea that has been echoed by Members of all parties. Any new regime should apply to other multi-occupancy institutional or residential buildings, which was also touched on in various amendments.

It would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether the Government have any plans to introduce a threshold height at which two staircases are required in order to provide means of both resident escape and firefighter entry. As he will no doubt be aware, concerns were raised that the plans for Ballymore’s proposed 51-storey development in Cuba Street in my constituency included only a single fire escape for a building that would have been two and half times the height of Grenfell tower.

Elsewhere in my constituency, the recent fire at Ballymore’s New Providence Wharf, where the fire spread between multiple floors and the ventilation system failed, led to smoke spreading throughout the building. That demonstrates the potential shortcomings of relying on stay put evacuation policies, so it would be helpful to know whether the Government have any plans to commit to addressing that in the Bill.

[Andy Slaughter]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she has done to draw wider attention to the Ballymore application, and indeed it has now been withdrawn. That is happening everywhere, however: on the border of my constituency, one over 50-storey block is already under construction and three others are in planning with, again, one staircase each. It is ridiculous to say that the stay put policy is the answer to that, because post Grenfell, people will not stay put and we understand exactly why.

[Apsana Begum]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point strongly. I share his concern that there is too much of a free pass in that situation and such buildings should just not be allowed to be presented. On his point, the Cuba Street development has been withdrawn for now, but it is only paused. It will come back and there is no guarantee that all the problems will be addressed, so it would be helpful to know whether the Government have any plans to address that issue and, if not, whether they will commit to a national independent review of stay put policies, particularly given that the Cuba Street proposal was allowed under existing building regulations.

At present, there are insufficient fire safety inspectors after decades of cuts and increased workloads. It is urgent that the fire and rescue service is properly funded and resourced, because people have a right to be safe in their own homes. The Bill is a small step forward, but it does not resolve the overall building safety crisis across the UK. In the words of the Fire Brigades Union, it is at best

“a sticking plaster over a gaping wound unless the whole regime rebuild around need rather than profit.”

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[Andy Slaughter]

There is not an issue before this House that causes me as much concern as the safety of residents living in high-rise blocks from the risk of fire. That has been the case since August 2016 when there was a very serious fire at Shepherd’s Court in my constituency, which I spoke about earlier today. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but a full evacuation of an 18-storey block was required. Then, 10 months later, we had the fire at Grenfell, the absolute horror of which stays with me every day. Grenfell is only about a mile from where I live, and for 72 people to lose their lives in those circumstances is just so appalling that we cannot spend enough time, or do enough, to ensure that that never happens again in the future. Yet we have had other serious fires since that time.

Grenfell led to the identifying of many faults, including external cladding, poor management, poor construction and maintenance, and the people who live in social housing in particular not being taken notice of. It also made us look at the whole issue of fire safety, which is what the Bill purports to do, and in that way Grenfell opened the door on many other issues as well. If the speech of the Minister who opened the Third Reading debate was reflected in the Bill, I would be delighted, because he announced it as a tour de force, or a tour de raison, and said that it would resolve all the issues, but it just does not. The Government’s approach has been piecemeal. It is the proverbial Swiss cheese, still full of holes, and there is a great lack of clarity. I say that with no pleasure at all. Let me give, in just a few minutes, a non-exhaustive list of the issues that I either still cannot comprehend or know are not properly covered in the Bill.

We started off with the building safety fund applying to buildings over 18 metres tall, and that was extended to one type of cladding, aluminium composite material cladding, and then to another, hydraulic power unit cladding. We have now had a recent announcement from the new Secretary of State—I hope I have understood this correctly—that there will be a request to private developers to provide £4 billion, with a veiled threat of enforcing that in some as yet unspecified way, in order to deal with buildings between 11 and 18 metres. I am not even sure whether this covers all types of cladding and external wall issues. Does it cover wooden balconies or wooden panelling, for example? I do not think that it does.

The issue has been raised several times, including today and in the statement, of non-cladding defects in buildings above 11 metres. I am not clear whether these will all be covered, yet all these things represent clear and present dangers of fire and fire spread. What about tall buildings that are not specifically residential, such as hospitals and hotels, but still pose risk to people, including vulnerable people, who sleep in them? What about buildings below 11 metres, which, either because they are of a particular construction or because of their use—for example, care homes and schools—also pose risk? We have heard nothing of that either.

This is an example from my own borough, and it is not a rare example. There are often developments where there are interlinked buildings above and below 18 metres. What has often happened is that, quite rightly, the landlord has got on with remedial works, probably because they have to do so in order to apply to the building safety fund within the time limit. They have obviously also done work on parts of the structure below 18 metres, but now they are told that leaseholders will not be able to recover the funds. That is a Catch-22 that has not been addressed in the Bill.

Earlier we touched on the issue of social landlords and tenants, and on the fact that they are both being made to pay through the nose. That money is coming out of those landlords’ other funds, which would otherwise be used for new home developments or the repair, maintenance and management of existing homes, and there has not been a clear response from the Government on that either.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) spoke of the fact that, every day, planning applications are going forward that do not comply with best practice. We heard the extreme example of blocks over 50 storeys tall that have a single staircase. What about the issue of stay put evacuation policies? What about alarm systems? What about sprinkler systems? What about ensuring, as I mentioned in dealing with electrical safety matters earlier, that all dwellings in a high-rise block are dealt with equally? Those are all pregnant questions, which I do not see being answered in the Bill at all.

Until we start to deal with this issue comprehensively, the Bill will only begin to scratch at a real problem. Yes, it is a real problem. I do not say it is a party political problem; it has developed over many decades. I think we are all shocked to find out that building standards are so low in this country, but now we know that, we have to do something.

My final plea is this: can we have transparency from the Government? I have followed organisations such as openDemocracy. Ever since Grenfell, a whole series of freedom of information requests have been resisted and pushed back, first through the inquiries unit in the Cabinet Office, and secondly through the now notorious clearing house that used to be run by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up. Last Friday, I saw an article published by openDemocracy that showed that they are still doing this—they are still trying to withhold information that is being legitimately requested. The irony is that the person to whom they went for assistance on how to withhold that information was a lady called Sue Gray. I hope that the practice of advising colleagues on how not to be frank and full in displaying information on such a subject will not carry over into other aspects of her work, but that is one further illustration of how we are so far away from dealing with this problem. I cannot sleep easily at night knowing that my constituents cannot sleep easily at night because the risk to them of, at worst, a repetition of Grenfell, or of something less dramatic but still problematic, is still there and has not been addressed by the Government over the last five years.