Domestic Premises (Electrical Safety Certificate) Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Fire Safety and Rescue. I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Foster on the Bill, but also on his long-standing campaign to achieve better electrical safety, whether in the recent Building Safety Bill or many questions about ensuring electrical safety, including appliances—not just about installations, which is what this Bill covers. I also thank the House of Lords Library for its helpful briefing.

The Bill looks at one very specific problem. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has outlined, at the moment in the sale of domestic properties there is an anomaly: any gas supply or gas fixtures will have been certified as having been safely installed and checked because of the five-year rule. This must be available to prospective purchasers and their conveyancers in the sale pack. The Bill remedies that, in a very neat way, for electrical installations.

One of the worrying aspects of modern fires in high-rise buildings is the number caused by faulty or defective installations. Home Office data shows that this number is growing, whether in the cables themselves or shoddy work. Electrical Safety First’s data—which the noble Lord, Lord Foster, cited—stated that there are five electrical fires a day in domestic properties, and that should be a wake-up call to us all. It should worry not just those interested in preventing fires, but also the insurance industry, our health service and the public, who have a right to know whether their properties are safe. Health services in particular have to pick up the pieces after people have been hurt in fires, whether receiving burns or—much more common—inhaling smoke, the long-term effects of which can affect people’s ability to work and they may be off sick for quite a long time. So the invisible cost to electrical installation fires has to be addressed too.

There is also a particular problem in flats and apartments, where electrical work may have been carried out by a contractor on behalf of a freeholder, and party walls—intended to give time to protect other parts of the building through compartmentation—have been breached, meaning that fire can spread much faster than it should. Grenfell Tower and many other fires in flats are now demonstrating that quite often compartmentation is breached. Many blocks are part privately owned, and part rented. The good thing about the Bill is that any work a freeholder carried out would presumably—I will perhaps check with my noble friend Lord Foster—also have to ensure that work in any private flats owned in that particular block would have to be similarly certified. That would give reassurance that compartmentation would not be breached because there would a checkpoint at the time that work happens.

The solution of my noble friend Lord Foster in the Bill is very neat. He is right that five-yearly certifications—currently required for gas installations, such as boilers—just would not work for electrical installations. But a certificate confirming that the original installation was safe—and recent enough to show that it is still safe—that was required to be shown at the time of the sale of the home to the new buyer and their conveyancer will provide the missing link that is needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, raises an interesting issue about the consequences of the Bill. I am less concerned about the over-expectation of home buyers because I think it will force buyers to seek advice as part of their fabric survey and be encouraged to consider work where necessary. Electrical wiring, for example, certainly lasts for up to 20 years and if you are buying something that was installed 15 years ago, then any survey should say that you should be considering ensuring that you renew or replace during your ownership of the property. I also think it will help the electrical industry too. Having the five-year certification has certainly transformed the gas industry, and it will help good and responsible electrical installers— such as the son of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—to know that there will be less opportunity for people who might try to skimp on the safety aspects.

During the recent passage of the Building Safety Act, we heard that many of the fires in high-rise blocks were started by faulty or defective electrical goods or by faulty electrical installation. This Bill brings certification of electrical installations into line with gas installations. It is long overdue, and I really hope that the Government will give it their support so that we can reduce the number of fires in private homes—whether houses or flats—and give assurances to home buyers that the invisible electrical installations they are purchasing with their home are safe.