Building Safety and Social Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I agree with the Secretary of State that we should have an annual Grenfell debate. It would be better to have it on, or as near as possible to, the anniversary date; it is somewhat disrespectful that we have waited nearly a month to have it this year. I am sure that the silent walks will continue. I have tried to attend them, at least on the anniversary, and I have noticed how, over the six years, the mood has changed from grief to frustration about the lack of progress from all sides—whether the Government or the inquiry—and now to real anger. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), was also there, and I am sure that he agrees on that point. I therefore do not recognise much of what the Secretary of State said about what is happening.

What seems to be happening is that, every year, there are more complex issues and while there has been some degree of resolution, more questions are raised and there are more problems to resolve about the causes and spread of fires. That, to a large extent, is to do with cladding, and not just ACM cladding. There are many other reasons why fire spreads through high rise buildings in particular. The families want to see a complete ban on ACM cladding on all buildings not only in this country but internationally. I hope that the Government will campaign for that to happen, because it is not only in the UK that tragic fires such as Grenfell have happened.

There are huge issues with the design of new buildings. That is evolving all the time, as we see in the two-staircase issue, as well as in remediation. It is to some extent easy to set new building standards for new buildings—well, it can be done—but we are lagging behind substantially in doing remedial work on existing buildings. Much of this comes down to finance. That is not just for individual leaseholders, who in certain circumstances will still have to pay out large sums of money, or where money is not forthcoming up front; it is also for social tenants, because social landlords are not getting the same degree of financial support as leaseholders, and social landlords have competing priorities as to what they spend their money on. Although I would like to, I will not take the time to deal with all those issues. I will deal with just three issues in detail.

First, there is the causes of fires. The cause of the Grenfell fire was what I am holding in my hand: a crimp, which is a small piece of wiring that costs a few pence. As I am sure people will guess, I am not an expert in these matters, so I am grateful to Richard Farthing, chairman of the Hammersmith Society, who has a background in electrical and electronic manufacturing. He sent me the expert report on the cause of the Grenfell fire. I will not go through all the technical details, but its short conclusion is:

“A probable cause of the fire is a poor crimp connection…an overheated wire connector within the compressor relay compartment for the fridge freezer (Hotpoint Model FF175BP) from Flat 16.”

It is as simple as that: a little component, costing a matter of pennies, which was either not fitted properly or not manufactured properly, caused a fire that led to the deaths of 72 people. Of course, there were many other issues of causation in Grenfell and elsewhere, but that draws attention to the lack of quality control in manufacturing processes.

The second issue on cause, which I encounter every month—not a month goes by when I do not hear about this, usually in a social housing block of flats in my constituency—is fires caused by lithium batteries. I say fires, but they are usually explosions. This is an extraordinary problem that the London Fire Brigade and, I am sure, fire brigades across the country are very much aware of.

A couple of weeks ago, three people were taken to hospital after a fire broke out in a flat in West Kensington due to a converted e-bike catching fire. What happens is that people buy a bike and want to convert it into an e-bike, so they buy a kit and a battery. Many of these things are bought second hand and are cheap, with faults in manufacture, so they overheat and literally explode. Anyone who does not believe me should look at the London Fire Brigade’s Twitter feed, where they will see explosions that completely engulf a room of a flat—sometimes the whole flat—within seconds. If compartmentalisation works—the fire is kept in that flat because of the construction of the doors and walls—and the occupants of the flat escape, there may be no serious injuries, but if that does not happen and the fire spreads, as it quite easily can, it is almost impossible to contain. That is about a lack of regulation. Why are we allowing such kits to be sold? Why are we allowing people to use them in high-rise buildings in that way? As I said, probably once a month I go and view the site of a fire caused by exactly that somewhere in my constituency, and it is only a matter of time before there are more fatalities. There have been fatalities through lithium batteries in that way.

The third issue on cause again comes from personal experience. The year before Grenfell, in a high-rise block of flats, Shepherd’s Court, on Shepherd’s Bush Green, a faulty tumble dryer caught fire and destroyed the flat. Hundreds of thousands of them were manufactured, mainly by a large company called Whirlpool under names such as Hotpoint and Indesit. They were cheaply made, cheap to buy and often sold second hand, and they are causing hundreds if not thousands of fires across the country. There is a lack of design prowess. Whether it is the crimp, quality control, the batteries, lack of regulation or lack of design, there is a crisis across the manufacturing and design sector.

I commend to the Secretary of State a newly published book by Professor Shane Ewen of Leeds Beckett University, “Before Grenfell: Fire, Safety and Deregulation in Twentieth-Century Britain”. It says:

“the Grenfell Tower fire was a disaster foretold—the culmination of successive decades of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional failure to learn from the lessons of past multiple-fatality fires.”

It is a very good read and I recommend it to the Secretary of State. It indicates that the crisis did not begin and certainly did not end with Grenfell, but has been going on a long time—the result of either deliberate Government policy or Government neglect to take care of the issues.

The second issue is design. As is often the case, I am grateful to the Royal Institute of British Architects, which has been pushing the issues of design and remedial work to high-rise buildings. Its particular ask is the trigger point for a second staircase. I think that people are familiar with the issue of having at least two staircases. Extraordinarily, hitherto, whereas non-residential buildings over 11 metres had to have a second staircase, a residential building can be as tall as you like. I know that because just overlooking my constituency in north Acton is a 50-plus-storey, newly constructed block that has one staircase in it. I am pleased to say that, due to the action of the Major of London, those seeking planning permission for blocks of flats over 30 metres are required to go back and put in a second staircase. A submission from RIBA, experts in this field, states that that should apply to any residential building over 18 metres. I would like the Government to adopt that.

When refurbishing, it may be difficult to put in a second staircase. There, the ask is that evacuation lifts, sprinklers and centrally addressable fire alarm systems be put in. Those do not have to be fire alarms that any resident can activate. In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, the “stay put” policy increasingly does not work. I understand why it was maintained, and it works in many cases, but it does not work if residents—completely understandably—fear for their lives and evacuate the building. If a decision is made to evacuate a building, there has to be a way of telling people in that building. Alarm systems that are controllable at least by the fire service are an important part of that equation. I cannot for the life of me think why we are not retrofitting sprinklers into high-rise buildings. They will stop 99% of fires. Many, many tragedies could be avoided if that happened.

My final point is the consequence. This debate is partly about social housing more generally, but I am not sure we have time to go into all aspects of that. I would like to address the crossover between fire safety and social housing providers, and the pressures on their resources. I was prompted to do so after reading an extraordinary interview that the Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), gave to Inside Housing a couple of days ago. It states:

“When asked what housing associations should prioritise without additional funding from government, and facing pressure to build, retrofit stock and meet building safety and historic disrepair costs, Ms Maclean replied: ‘It’s up to them.’”

That shows an absolute tin ear to the current pressures on social landlords. They want to develop new stock—again, completely contrary to what the Housing Minister said in that interview, the number of social rented homes that this Government have created is appalling low, standing at 7,644 last year. She said in the same interview:

“We’ve delivered more social rented homes in this government than under the last Labour government.”

These facts are easily discoverable: the current Government have built less than half the number built by the previous Labour Government.

That is only one aspect of the crisis in social housing. We have heard about damp, mould and disrepair, which need to be dealt with. Retrofitting needs to be dealt with—at a cost of about £23 billion—as well as building safety, which is what we are talking about today. Why are social housing landlords in such a plight? The answer is that they lost 60% of the social housing grant under the austerity Government. Due to rent controls and other matters, they are unable to come up with the resources they need. It is so bad that the smaller associations are going under or are having to merge into much larger associations.

The whole sector is being distorted by the financial pressures. The big landlord group G15 says that out of the £6 billion it will need to pay for remedial work due to fire safety measures, it will have to find £4 billion itself. That means that its tenants and leaseholders will have to find that money, because there is no other readily available source. Shepherds Bush Housing Group, a formerly well-respected local medium-sized housing association, has just had to be taken over by Guinness, a much larger association, because it simply cannot financially survive with all the pressures on it.

There is an existential threat to the social housing market. Previous Conservative Governments decided to move from council housing to housing associations in a big way. The Government will have to rethink where they are on those issues because it is no longer sustainable for housing associations to go forward with the financial support that they have.

When the Housing Minister winds up the debate, perhaps she will correct some of the errors that she made in that interview, and perhaps she will address a more listening ear to social landlords. They perform an extremely important function. I heard everything the Secretary of State said about that; the rhetoric is all well and good, but the actuality is that tenants are living in poor conditions and people are in temporary accommodation —we have the highest levels ever—because no decent social housing is being built and maintained in this country. That is what tenants and leaseholders are looking for, not warm words and empty rhetoric.