Building Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. In so doing, I declare that I am a trustee of the Nationwide Foundation, which supports the TCPA’s Healthy Homes Act campaign. I shall not detain the House for too long other than to reiterate the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who introduced the amendment admirably. This is a simple but profound amendment that should be taken note of. As we have heard, we already have a great deal of evidence about the impact of housing on both health and education—Covid highlighted all of that—and how that contributes to inequalities in health. For all those reasons, it is important that we take note of the amendment and make sure that it is incorporated, whether into this Bill or a planning Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said. One cannot fault the logic of what has been recommended, so I strongly support the amendment and look forward to the Minister’s response. I also urge him to agree to meet some of us to see how this issue can be taken forward.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all these amendments, which have been so powerfully and comprehensively introduced. I am not going to go over any of the same ground but shall focus particularly on Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, with full cross-party backing, particularly the wording,

“‘safety’ means the risk of harm arising from the location … of buildings”.

In some ways that might be seen to deliver the aims of two amendments that I tabled in Committee but have not brought back on Report, Amendments 132A and 132B, which would have delivered what has been called Zane’s law, targeting the issue of contaminated land and the risks that such land may represent to residents and others in nearby buildings. For those who do not know, Zane’s law refers to the tragic child Zane Gbangbola, who died and whose father was disabled when flooding carried contaminants from nearby land into their home.

If we had a safe location for every building, that would seem to deal with the issue. However, looking at our debate in Committee, I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, kindly offered support for amendments in this direction. What she said then clearly sets out the problem:

“If we can identify the size and scale in every part of the country where contamination is, that would be a very logical starting point to prevent future risk to life and support local authorities in tackling the whole issue of contamination”.


In responding, the Minister suggested that the Building Safety Bill was not the right place to bring in Zane’s law because it would take the focus away from the environment and put it only on buildings. I think that she was right in that supposition, which is why I have not brought the amendments back now; the planning Bill, if indeed we see one, may well be the place to do that. However, where I disagree with the Minister—she was responding to my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who kindly introduced these amendments as I could not be present—is where she noted that Section 143 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990

“was repealed, but it was replaced by Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990”.—[Official Report, 2/3/22; cols. GC 333-34.]

However, that was a significant downgrading of the protection and the powers offered by local authorities. It is worth looking at what was known as, perhaps rather unfortunately, the Red Tape Challenge: Environment Theme Proposals from March 2012, which effectively downgraded three-quarters of environmental regulation. Those changes to the guidelines said that they were

“anticipated to save business £140 million a year by reducing uncertainty about when land needs to be remediated”.

“Reducing uncertainty” is a phrase that needs to be re-examined and reconsidered.

I commend all the amendments, particularly Amendment 2, which focuses on the issue of the safe location of buildings. A great deal of regulatory work would have to be done to deliver that, which would include Zane’s law. If this becomes part of the Bill, the Government would have to look at that, but it would be a big step forward if we focused adequately on ensuring that—in this age of the Anthropocene and the climate emergency, in which new risks are emerging that were not present before—no one has a home or building in a place that is dangerous.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and declare an interest as chair of Oxford University’s Commission on Creating Healthy Cities. I also declare my interest as a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association.

An obvious case of building safety impacting on health and well-being is surely the permitted development rights regime. Submissions to the Oxford Commission on Creating Healthy Cities have revealed widespread condemnation of the appalling building standards allowed via permitted development rights, which permit conversions of commercial and industrial buildings into accommodation without the need for normal planning consents. This has led to the creation of some ghastly, substandard new slums often on non-residential business parks full of safety hazards, with no facilities, no play areas for children and danger from traffic. Research at University College London reveals that a very large proportion of the well over 100,000 homes delivered through these permitted development rights have been substandard.

I am pleased that there has now been some regulatory change and requirements for at least some natural light and minimum space standards. However, this controversy has highlighted the importance of adequate space, sufficient daylight, protection from noise and a surrounding environment that is not hostile and unhealthy. That underlines the need for bringing together housing and health issues under the banner of minimum standards that recognise the broader definition of safety in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. This would engage the new regulator in the process and require attention to be paid to health and well-being as essential aspects of the homes that we build and the places that we make. I support Amendment 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 264 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, which would require a report on the built environment industry workforce that takes into account various factors. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that this is very much a probing amendment; we certainly do not intend to press it today.

However, we need to give this issue an airing. The whole pyramid on which this Bill is constructed depends on that bottom level: the workforce who will deliver it. We know that there is a grievous shortage of fire risk assessors, not least because the fire risk assessor who assessed Grenfell Tower was an unqualified, off-duty firefighter who made up the qualification letters that he put after his name when he applied for the job with the tenant management organisation. That evidence was given in phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry.

We know that the Government have made strenuous efforts to get fire assessment training going but there is every indication that there is not enough and that, when this regime comes into force—we all want to see this as soon as possible—there will be a shortage of fire risk assessors. Earlier today, wearing his fire responsibilities hat via the Home Office, the Minister made the point that one of the jobs in the fire and rescue service is to upskill staff to gain the competences they need to fulfil their functions of realistically assessing risks and remedies in the duties they undertake. We think that there needs to be a clear plan for developing training for and upskilling the people taking on the new roles in this Bill. There is a whole series of new posts, including accountable persons and responsible persons—not to mention the safety regulator staffing itself—and we need some assurance that the Government are clear on all of them and have a laser-like focus on producing the answers that are needed. This is against the background of an industry that employs 2 million people, has 90,000 sole traders operating on the ground and in many ways, as we have discussed, has a dysfunctional contracting model. It certainly has low productivity and very poor standards of delivery of outcome.

The amendment may or may not be over-elaborate. I hope that it would be a work plan that someone is working on, even if it should not be in the Bill. I really want to hear the Minister give an account of how a work plan such as this is in fact going forward. If not, we will certainly be snapping at his heels over the coming months. Much more seriously than that, he will find that there will be the gravest difficulty in implementing the Bill, which is what we all want to see, on the shortest possible timescale.

I am the resident pointing at the hole in the road and saying to the contractor, “Please come and fill in this hole”. That is what this amendment is about.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I want briefly, having just had a signal on those lines, to offer Green support for all the amendments. I will speak only to Amendment 261 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. I commend him on his long work in this area.

I am perhaps a little less charitable to the Government than him about where things are now. Just this afternoon, while we were debating the second group of amendments, the Green Alliance put out a new report, Cutting the Cost of Living with a Green Economy. It has some figures that are interesting and helpful for this debate. It points out that the cuts to energy efficiency subsidies and the scrapping of the zero-carbon homes policy over the past decade saw the installation rate of home insulation and energy measures go from 2.3 million in 2012 to 230,000 in 2013—a rate that has continued since.

This addresses the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just asked about what we can do and whether it is possible to step up again. We have done this in the past; we can do this in future. The noble Baroness expressed concern about a lack of costing for that. The Green Alliance report points out that, if we followed Amendment 261, through insulating 15.3 million homes, it would save them all £511 a year after the April price cap rise. For the country, that is £7.8 billion a year, mostly in fossil fuel.

Looking again at the costing, the Great Homes Upgrade plan, put together by the New Economics Foundation along with 28 organisations, shows that spending £11.7 billion over this Parliament could raise 7 million homes up to this standard by 2025. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, this is very much a health and safety issue. We have set the standard of zero carbon by 2050. That is a target for the environment; this is a target for people’s health. Surely we can have both health and environment targets that so crucially fit together.

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, taking the time into consideration, I beg to move that we adjourn the debate on this amendment and that consideration on Report be adjourned until after the Urgent Question.