Building Safety Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite her to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I shall speak to a number of amendments in this group, broadly divided into two areas. The first follows on from my noble friend Lord Foster’s introduction to the protection of property and the powers of the regulator. The second relates specifically to the safety of buildings and disabled people.

On the first issue, much of the focus among the public and in the debate in the run-up to the Bill coming to your Lordships’ House has been on cladding and the height of buildings. As was discussed specifically at Second Reading, a far wider range of safety, construction and adaptation issues have emerged as secondary issues, generally meaning that too many buildings are not complying with even the old building safety regulations. Life safety is not the only issue: far too many new buildings these days are being constructed in an unsafe way. The level of complaints against builders is the highest it has ever been, and my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath outlined that very clearly.

Secondly, I want to focus on the issues that disabled people face when they are asked to get out of a building, in the event of either a fire or a fire alarm. I am really looking forward to hearing the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, after her excellent speech at Second Reading.

I have not always used a wheelchair, but I still use a stick on various occasions, and I have to say that there is nothing more frightening than trying to leave even a low-level building coming downstairs with a stick with people racing past you. It was probably the second time I had to come out of a building for a fire alarm when I realised that I was as much a danger to the people trying to race past me as I was to myself, because of the risk of falling. Over the years, I have twice been in hotels where the fire alarm has gone off in the middle of the night—once, when I was trying to use my stick. The second time, because I was in my wheelchair, I had been told to report to the safety zone, which I did, and was told that someone from reception or the fire officers would come up, transfer me to the evac chair and take me downstairs. Twenty minutes later, I was still sitting there.

I have to say to noble Lords that this also happened to me in Portcullis House about five or six years ago. As a result—all credit to the House authorities—that was remedied and there is now a new arrangement. But when you are sitting there and you do not know whether it is a fire or a fire practice, and you cannot get out of your own accord, it is extremely alarming.

The use of PEEPs—personal evacuation emergency plans—is excellent, provided that they work. I have used them in workplaces, homes, hotels and guest houses. I was in charge of building some new disabled accommodation at Selwyn College when I was bursar there more than 20 years ago, and although they were not called PEEPs in those days, creating a confident document so that students, their friends around them and the college staff understood the needs of that particular disabled person was vital to them having confidence about being able to evacuate the building in the event of an emergency. The difficulty that we face today, highlighted especially by Grenfell, is that these documents are not in place.

Many disabled people are very concerned that the Home Office has appointed safety consultants CS Todd & Associates, who have been given a new contract worth over £200,000. This organisation was responsible for drafting and editing a fire safety guide for the LGA that said it was “usually unrealistic” to expect landlords to put arrangements in place for disabled people to evacuate blocks of flats in the event of an emergency. That is an interesting turn of phrase, because, as we know, there were a lot of disabled people in Grenfell and flats are increasingly being built, so evacuation for disabled people is vital.

I especially thank disabled campaigning group Claddag, a leaseholder action group led by disabled people who have decided that they will take the Home Secretary to court on this contract. They and the Disabled News Service are really highlighting this issue. It is important to note that, six years on from Todd’s advice, two-fifths of the disabled residents in Grenfell Tower lost their lives because there were no special arrangements in place to get them out safely. The fire service has recognised that the “stay put” advice for residents in high rise blocks must be changed, but there is no evidence from either the Government or from CS Todd & Associates that things have changed. In fact, a further set of advice has been published by Colin Todd on behalf of BSI that repeated this same arrangement.

That is why we need the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. There is an adage in the disabled world that says, “no decision about us without us”. This is fundamental to human safety and human life. It is vital that the specific needs of disabled people are taken into account in the Bill.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, wishes to take part remotely. I now invite the noble Baroness to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I support both amendments in this group so helpfully introduced by my noble friend Lord Stunell. We heard in our debate on the previous group of amendments about the wide range of safety concerns, from fire and flood to methods of construction and fitting out, which mean that some buildings are at risk. I should declare my interest as the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group, and I thank the many Fire Ministers who have appeared before it, including the current Minister and indeed a previous Minister, who spoke just now.

I support the ideas about the golden thread as outlined by my noble friend Lord Stunell. Amendment 3 does that. Frankly, I thank him for owning up to the fact that he did not do this when he was a Minister. The all-party group has, over the years, argued for this policy to be part of the fire safety protocol.

The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and supported by my noble friend Lady Pinnock, have a key safety issue: the power to prevent a developer’s ability to pick their own regulator. It is right that it is the public building regulator, the Local Authority Building Control, that is the sole regulator.

The bonfire of regulations just over a decade ago has meant that this field has become murky and filled with a lot of organisations that may indeed have close relationships. There was one day when the all-party group heard from a whistleblower who told us that, in the past, there has been unacceptable practice when the developer or owner of a building has had the ability to pick and choose the inspector, in this case, but it could have been a regulator. Fire safety inspectors were booked to come and check the fire safety doors—the front doors of flats and those on the stairwells—and that they were still the right ones that would manage the 40-minute fire safety tests. The managing agents for the building asked for a delay of a week, which was granted. The whistleblower said that it had been noticed by a number of residents that a series of doors were removed and replaced with other doors during that week—which of course passed all the tests—and, the week after the inspection, all the old doors were put back.

There has to be a mechanism for a regulator to start picking up on, and being concerned, when organisations are not playing by the rules. Those alarm bells can best be raised by the independent Local Authority Building Control.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 135 in my name, which was referred to a moment ago by my noble friend Lord Stunell, and which I intend as a probing amendment. I should say that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I raised this issue at Second Reading, as the Minister will recall, and the question of whether permitted development rights would continue as now when this Bill is enacted, in respect of the conversion of office blocks to residential accommodation of any height. Amendment 135 seeks to clarify the matter. It says that

“Nothing in the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 … permits development which would convert offices to residential accommodation if such development is contrary to the provisions of this Act.”


I am grateful to the Public Bill Office for the help in drafting those words.

I simply say to the Minister that I hope he will clarify that this is government policy. If it is, that fact should be in the Bill to avoid any doubt. I look forward to the Minister’s assurance, because it would be inappropriate—as my noble friend Lord Stunell said—if a different set of rules were to apply to a conversion from office to residential than would apply to a residential block always designated as that. This amendment aims to clarify that the permitted development route cannot be used where it would be contrary to the provisions of this Act. I hope the Minister will agree that this is a very important issue.

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[The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be participating remotely, and I invite her to speak now.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, just before I speak to the two amendments in this group, I ask the Minister whether I might be copied into the answer about permitted development rights on the previous group. We had an interesting case in Watford three years ago, where a small industrial unit was converted under permitted development rights into 15 tiny flats, and not one of the upstairs flats had windows. At the time, the planning inspector, who overruled the borough council, commented that it was within the rules and that planning permission was not required. Even the size of the flats was outside of the scope: normally, the minimum should have been 39 square metres; the largest flat was 22 square metres and the smallest was 16 square metres. I would be grateful if I could see the Minister’s written response.

I support both Amendments 5 and 10 laid by my noble friend Lord Stunell and signed by my noble friend Lady Pinnock. Dame Judith Hackitt talked about the importance of absolute clarity on who is responsible for which element of safety and control. The mistake in recent years has been to allow a multitude of different arrangements that have enabled a culture where matters of safety are somebody else’s problem; hence Dame Judith Hackitt’s focus in her report on the golden thread.

My noble friend Lord Stunell has talked eloquently about the issues thrown up by self-certification. I will not repeat his points, other than to say that destroying compartmentation by remediation works much reduces all other safety features, if not makes them redundant. I echo his concerns about that, and I would welcome the Minister’s response in order to see whether that is covered by the new arrangements. If it is not, these amendments should be given serious consideration.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I will just say how important these amendments are. Although they are brief and innocuous on the surface, they are fundamental to building safety. In the Grenfell Tower inquiry, it became clear that the window replacement was not as satisfactory as one would hope and that the gaps between the window frames and structure of the building were filled with a flammable material. That is why the second amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Stunell is so important.

That is just one example. Electrical safety is also critical. Self-certification is all very well, but having oversight, as the Hackitt report points to, helps to create clarity and accountability and to ensure that there is proper documentation. I hope that the Minister will be able to put our minds at rest but, if not, it is certainly one of the areas that we will want to pursue at the next stage of this debate.

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[The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is participating remotely, and I invite her to speak now.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak specifically to Amendment 6 but I endorse the others, for reasons that will become apparent. One thing we have all become aware of, post Grenfell and the Hackitt review, is concerns about repeat problems emerging, whether they are systemic ones to do with the way a building has been built or newly emerging issues. They happen time and again, and yet the industry, councils and Parliament do not seem to learn from them. I shall give one brief illustration to explain.

In my role as health spokesperson for my group in the Lords, I know that we are increasingly concerned about some of the mould and damp issues increasingly found in more recent 1960s buildings, to which landlords have been very slow to respond. There is clearly a public health issue where especially children and the clinically vulnerable remain at risk and become ill, and yet there does not seem to be a mechanism to provide a review to make sure that there is learning from this, especially since it is happening across the country.

The other amendments in this group set out a swathe of mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability for the BS regulator, the Secretary of State and Parliament. Returning to Dame Hackitt’s review, these amendments would be a strategic element to push the culture change that she sought, to make sure that those who have some responsibility have to look at a higher level to make sure that buildings are safe and are dealt with, and that the costs, both in building and in human experience, are monitored.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Briefly, I support the idea of review clauses and of learning from mistakes. Obviously, I have not been a Minister in this area, but I was a Minister in other areas and I did agree, occasionally, to review clauses where people had concerns. I found that the reports that came along two years later—if one survived that long—were actually extremely useful, and ensured that the Civil Service system was behind the objectives of the Bill. Exactly what one would put in a review clause is another question. I would certainly want added some of the points I made earlier—which the Minister helpfully said were contained in a code of practice for regulators—bringing up the agenda the sort of good practice we have seen at some of our better regulators, such as the HSE. I hope the Minister will think about whether there is scope for a review clause to help on some of these issues.

We talked about sprinklers. As people know, I have run supermarkets, so I have had practical experience of all these different fire safety methods. Certainly, when sprinklers were put in, it took away a lot of headaches, provided you could secure the water supply. That sort of innovation—whatever the new ones are; AI or whatever—can form part of a review process two, four or six years later.