Building Safety Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I support all three amendments in this group. Amendment 111, which was laid by my noble friend Lord Foster and to which I have added my name, aims to protect consumers from items purchased online that are non-compliant with rules for purchasing the same products in shops. I thank him for his clear and detailed explanation of why it is needed.

The excellent analysis by Electrical Safety First of the Office for Product Safety and Standards demonstrates that there is a real safety issue. Nearly two-thirds of electrical products bought in an online marketplace are non-compliant and a shocking quarter is actively unsafe. Electrical Contracting News said that in 2020 faulty appliances caused 43 fires per week in England. Everyday household appliances caused 15,000 accidental fires in homes. We know that some serious and fatal fires in high-rise and medium-rise buildings were caused by faulty appliances. Some fires were due to household items being placed too close to the source of heat or to misuse of appliances, but a number were due to appliances that were found to be faulty.

If two-thirds of electrical products bought in online marketplaces are non-compliant and, worse, a quarter is unsafe, that is a recipe for danger. Perhaps it is not surprising that legislation is taking time to catch up with new ways of purchasing goods, yet the focus of this Bill is to ensure that buildings are safe, especially high-rise buildings. This amendment proposes a solution to the problem and I support it.

Briefly, I want also to add my support to Amendment 112 laid by my noble friend Lady Pinnock and Amendment 117 laid by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The amendment of my noble friend Lady Pinnock also responds to evidence given at both the Grenfell inquiry and Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of the appalling habits of too many construction product companies of managing to soften or even blatantly breach the safety regulations. It is evident that the regulations are out of date and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond favourably to this, too.

Finally, the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, highlights the importance of the provision of CO detectors and alarms and seeks for the responsible person to ensure that they are provided. Too many times, people end up with unsafe equipment, whether an old gas fire or, worse, a new exterior gas fire being used inside through ignorance, which has resulted in the deaths of far too many people. We are used to having smoke alarms in buildings, especially high-rise ones. We should also have CO detectors and monitors as a matter of absolute routine for safety. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to speak to my Amendment 117 in this group— I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings heath, for supporting this amendment with me. I should declare my interest, as I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group and I chair the CO Research Trust.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, faulty appliances are often a source of carbon monoxide, but so are wood-burning stoves and oil central heating. Anything that burns a carbon-based fuel can produce carbon monoxide, which is colourless, tasteless and odourless and results from incomplete combustion of the fuel. The problem is that high levels kill you rapidly, within a few minutes, but the symptoms are that you just feel warm and sleepy. You think that you are comfortable and sleepy; the next thing you are dead. However, low levels also produce long-term damage and are thought to damage the developing foetus in pregnant women.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We will also be introducing requirements for labelling construction products, to support regulatory activity. Once again, I thank the noble Baroness for raising this matter but, based on the explanation I have just provided, the Government will not be supporting the amendment.

Finally, on Amendment 117, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, I thank her for raising the important matter of carbon monoxide and the risk it poses. Carbon monoxide can be released from faulty or leaky boilers and chimneys. As the noble Baroness said, it is colourless, odourless and tasteless and can lead to life-changing injuries or death. It is indeed sometimes called the “silent killer”.

The Government take the risks and consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning very seriously and share a common goal with the noble Baroness of wanting to safeguard people from this deadly gas. She was right to stress the relationship between poverty, particularly fuel poverty, and the high incidence of harmful indoor air quality. However, the new clause is unnecessary. Legislation is already in place, as I will go on to explain, and we will bring forward new legislation and updates to guidance that will safeguard people from the harmful effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. We believe that, together, these measures will achieve the improvement in safety sought by this clause. The gas safety regulations require the safe installation, maintenance and use of gas systems, and they require landlords to carry out annual gas safety checks, which reduce the risks of carbon monoxide poisoning.

While carbon monoxide alarms are not a substitute for the proper installation, use and checks of combustion appliances, they are a useful additional precaution. Currently, our building regulations require appropriate provision for carbon monoxide detection and alarms when solid fuel appliances are installed in homes, irrespective of tenure. The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 require carbon monoxide alarms in privately rented homes where there is a solid fuel appliance.

Recent evidence and analysis show that, although solid fuel appliances, such as wood-burning stoves, continue to be responsible for a disproportionate number of carbon monoxide incidents, the case to require alarms for combustion appliances using other fuels has grown. Therefore in 2020 we consulted on proposals to extend provisions for carbon monoxide alarms to be fitted when oil and gas-heating boilers are installed in all homes, irrespective of tenure, and to require that alarms are installed in any room used for habitation with a fixed combustion appliance, excluding gas cookers, in privately rented homes and social housing. These proposals received broad support and, in 2021, we announced that we will amend the regulations as soon as parliamentary time allows, with the changes coming into effect as soon as practicable. We will also update the statutory guidance on carbon monoxide alarms.

These new measures extend the use of carbon monoxide alarms to the extent that we consider appropriate, based on the current evidence available. The extended alarm measures are not limited to high-rise buildings and will apply to newly installed combustion appliances in homes irrespective of tenure and to all private and social landlords. While I appreciate the intention of the amendment, I hope I have reassured noble Lords that we have committed to extending the requirements and guidance around carbon monoxide alarms where appropriate to do so. I therefore ask the noble Baroness not to press the amendment.

Once again, I thank noble Lords for this debate, which has considered wider matters connected to safety, and I hope that, with the reassurances given, noble Lords will be content not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

May I ask why the Government have not extended the requirement to all new builds and to major refurbishments when they are bought by a company and subsequently sold, and why there is a resistance to insisting that alarms are installed in workplaces? More and more firms are now struggling with the cost of heating. They may be turning it down, and people in the workplace may, in wanting to keep warm, bring in heating devices from outside that should be used for camping and cooking outside, or whatever. With fuel poverty, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning is going to rise.

Simply to put into regulation that alarms need to be installed seems a move that would not cost anything significant to the building trade, or anyone refurbishing buildings—but to leave it simply restricted to landlords and to rely on annual checks, when we know that they are not always done adequately, seems completely inappropriate and highly risky. The landlord has to check the appliance installed, but when people are in fuel poverty they often cannot afford to run that appliance as it should be used—and, as I said, they will do such things as use an oven with the door open to try to stay warm, and that will pour out carbon monoxide. The other problem with that is that the level of air in the room is exactly at the level of a toddler’s face, so children are more exposed than adults in such a situation. If an alarm was installed, it would go off irrespective of relying on a landlord.

The other problem is that a lot of people now in fuel poverty are not in rented accommodation. They have mortgage commitments which they are struggling to pay. They are suddenly finding that they are in a band of poverty that they never imagined they would be in when they took out a large loan to purchase their property, particularly with interest rates going up as well.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

As I said in my speech, the extended alarm measures will apply to all newly installed combustion appliances in homes, irrespective of tenure, and to all private and social landlords. I should also add that we consulted in November 2020 on proposals to extend the requirements for carbon monoxide alarms to oil and gas heating installations and to social housing. The Government are yet to respond to this consultation, but we will do so in due course.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have signed Amendments 122, 123 and 124 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and will come to them in a minute, but I wanted to start by supporting Amendment 120, laid by my noble friend Lady Jolly.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, has said, BS 5395-1 ensures that staircases in new-build homes have the best possible ratios between treads and risers. This is especially important as many new-build homes are built to fewer square metres than recommended, resulting in staircases being squeezed into narrower spaces. There is only one consequence of that: stairs become steeper, and too often even fail to have a handrail all the way up because of the narrowness of the stairs. That is a recipe for falls, whether for children, the elderly, or the disabled.

Let me tell noble Lords, it is extremely scary to have to come slowly and painfully down steep emergency exit stairs, holding a handrail, with a stick in your other hand, while others race past you. On one occasion, someone tripped on my stick as they tried to race past me, resulting in both of us falling—luckily, only a couple of steps. Had it been at the top of a run of 10 steps, not only would we both have hurt ourselves badly but others following would probably have fallen over us too. Building standards are there for a reason and should be a minimum for new builds. Building in safety is part of Hackitt’s golden thread.

Elderly and disabled people using a stick, or sticks, on a narrow and steep staircase, possibly with no handrail, will be at serious risk of falls. Special fracture clinics report that falls in the vulnerable often lead to life-changing injuries, serious muscle loss while they are in hospital, loss of confidence and, sadly, earlier deaths. So it does not just cost lives; it costs quality of life, and it also costs the NHS and social care millions every year in extra treatment and care support.

I now turn to the other three amendments in this group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, to which I have added my name. One of the worrying aspects of fires in high and medium-rise residential blocks is the number caused by faulty or defective installation. Home Office data shows that this number is growing, whether from the cables themselves or from the shoddy work on party walls that breaches compartmentation, both of which are completely unacceptable. These amendments address that.

Amendment 122 requires leaseholders to ensure the safety of electrical installations in high-rise buildings. Amendment 123 specifies that leaseholders in mixed tenure high rises have to ensure the safety of their electrical installations. Amendment 124 places a specific responsibility on social landlords to do the same. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, spoke eloquently in the first group this afternoon about the problems of breached compartmentation and quoted from Dame Judith Hackitt’s report. The same applies here, but currently the same responsibility does not apply to different types of landlords and leaseholders, and this is an unacceptable loophole. The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Foster, remedy that.

The requirements in these amendments make it clear that leaseholders and landlords have a duty to ensure that installation works must be safe. Surely, that is not too much to ask. Surely, all these various types of flat should have a current electrical installation condition report, which not only demonstrates that they, the landlords and leaseholders, have taken care to ensure the safety of residents and the buildings they live in but gives them the same protection as those of flats with private tenants. Dame Judith Hackitt’s golden thread does not just apply to the construction industry; it also applies to those with responsibilities for the buildings once they are lived in. Most tenants are not aware of the distinction between different types of landlord and leaseholder in building safety law. Surely, our law should be consistent.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I was delighted to see this amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. As she pointed out, more than 700 people die each year from falls on the stairs. But in addition to this, 43,000 people are admitted to hospital. Falls are tragic and common, but they do not often make the news. Someone is estimated to fall on stairs every 90 seconds, and falls on stairs account for a quarter of all falls in the home. Obviously, when stairs have an inadequate guardrail, the trauma sustained is even worse, as it is when they are a long flight of stairs.

The most common injury is a fractured hip, but the most costly to the country is a spinal cord injury, which is absolutely devastating. The lifetime average cost of a spinal cord injury is £1.12 million, which works out at a total of £1.43 billion for all the accumulated spinal cord injuries. These are staggering figures, yet the British Standard, which has been referred to, is associated with a 60% reduction in falls. It has existed since 2010 and has been thoroughly tested, evidenced and assessed by industry and government. If we are to have homes that are built as homes for life, we need stairs in them that are safe. If workplaces are to be safe, they must have safe evacuation stairs as well.

As they grow older, many people need to install a stairlift in their home to enable them to go up and down stairs safely, particularly when they have items to carry. Many homes are still being built with stairs too narrow to safely install a stairlift on. In the long term, the British Standard is a very good investment for the nation.

I know that the Minister is aware of all of this and has been working with RoSPA to come to a solution. I look forward to hearing an update from him on this matter, because RoSPA and those of us who signed this amendment honestly believe that this one action could save more lives than anything else in the Bill.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt. The Minister has had to leave to deal with a pressing personal matter. Can I ask for a five-minute adjournment?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

My Lords, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

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

If the Minister cannot accept this modest but important improvement to the Bill, I hope that he may commit to finding another way to formally incorporate his department’s collaborative procurement guidance in the new regime, perhaps through secondary legislation. The guidance is clearly intended to be part of the regulatory framework, but I do not see how this will happen as it stands. Guidance is by its nature voluntary and past experience shows all too often that the construction sector does not do voluntary. Some sort of statutory underpinning is needed to ensure that the fundamental importance of procurement and contractual arrangements to the building safety regime embodied in this Bill is recognised and acted on. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others. I had the privilege to be on the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which reported six years ago with Building Better Places. We had extensive evidence from Public Health England on the impacts of the built environment on health. That built on the work done by Michael Marmot on the social determinants of health and the evidence of the cost to the nation of poor housing. In our report, we recommended that those working in housing should take account of the health impacts of their decisions. The relevant paragraph of the government response to our report said:

“The Government recognises the importance of considering health as part of the planning process and believes health impacts should be considered as part of the wider policy environment.”


The plea that we heard from the noble Lords, Lord Crisp and Lord Bethell, to integrate these factors and consider them at every stage has been supported by the evidence for many years. I hope that the Government will listen to the evidence that they themselves took on board in responding to our report.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in Committee but was unable to speak to it, so I welcome the opportunity to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech that he made a few moments ago. I do so having been responsible for building control under the Thatcher and Major Administrations.

No one could object to the aspirations behind the amendment and the Healthy Homes Act campaign and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically. I understand that so far the Government have objected to the proposal on the grounds that this is a matter for planning rather than for building regulations. The boundary between the two is inevitably not clearly marked and many people think that, if they have planning consent, that is the end of their interface with the local authority.

I have just one suggestion to make. The Minister may take the view that some of the objectives in the TCPA brief fall on the planning side rather than the building regulations side. I quote from its manifesto, which says that homes should

“be built to design out crime and be secure … all new homes should … provide access to sustainable transport and walkable services, including green infrastructure and play space”

and should have a minimum liveable space. Those all seem to be entirely reasonable requests. If my noble friend takes that view and believes that they are not appropriate to this Bill, can he give an assurance that they will be incorporated into the next planning Bill so that we can get to the same destination, albeit via a different route?

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I too support Amendment 262 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, to which I have put my name. I will not go through all the reasons why it makes common sense but we have had the British Standard for well over 10 years and it is more observed in the omission than the commission. We really must make progress at this stage.

The Minister gave valuable assurances in Committee; the reason that we need to press him today is to get some clarity about the timetable for this. I feel that, if we cannot get a guarantee that it will be not only consulted upon but implemented within a 12-month period, we will have to regard that as unsatisfactory and press this amendment. Can he tell us whether he can meet that 12-month deadline for consultation and implementation and, if not, what the problem is and what the timetable will be? The standard has been around for a decade and it seems that this is a “just get the finger out” moment. I am sure that he is a “just get the finger out” sort of Minister.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, yesterday, and for sharing the correspondence that he had had over the Building Regulations Advisory Committee. He explained why it would be easier to update a statutory approved document than primary legislation, and the need for such statutory regulation to be reviewed rapidly and changed as things go on.

I endorse what has been said by others who have spoken, in that there is an urgency to this. Around many parts of the UK at the moment, we see what is almost an explosion of housebuilding and of other building sites. It would be really tragic if the Bill went through but those buildings do not have staircases in them which are fit for the population who are going to use them, and if we do not see a real drop in accidents in these new buildings. The old housing stock is obviously really difficult and much of it has inappropriate staircases, but we are talking here about new build. Because of that, there is an urgency and I hope that, when the Minister responds, he gives us a really good and tight timetable.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as a former retailer, I have a good deal of sympathy with Amendment 254 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster. I agree with him that there is a gap here with online material posing a risk to safety, which is not the case with normal retail sales. In summing up, can my noble friend the Minister give us a bit more confidence as to when that gap will be filled? The Government are often too slow.

In that vein, I very much welcome the progress made by my noble friend the Minister on staircases, which are the subject of Amendment 262. I agree that the approach outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, seems to make sense and allow us the opportunity to get on with this consumer issue as well.

I share the concerns underlying Amendment 264 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. There is a real problem of shortages in the built environment workforce, as highlighted in the Built Environment Committee’s report on demand for housing—a committee on which several Members of this House sit and which I have the honour to chair. However, to be honest, the amendment is overcomplicated. The direction of travel is right but I am doubtful that we should accept an amendment in this form.

On Amendment 261, of course we need improved homes; cold homes are very bad for health, as has been shown by many studies. However, this is an uncosted proposal. It will have huge compliance costs for homeowners—admittedly, over a reasonably long period—and I really do not think that we are in a position to add it to this Bill today.