Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

These regulations were laid before this House on 16 March 2015. The Energy Act 2013 gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations requiring landlords of residential premises to install smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. These draft regulations were laid under Section 150 of that Act and Section 250 of the Housing Act 2004.

The draft regulations will require private sector landlords, from 1 October 2015, to have at least one smoke alarm installed on every storey of their rental property which is used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation where solid fuel is used. After that, the landlord must make sure that the alarms are in working order at the start of each new tenancy.

Local authorities will be responsible for enforcing the regulations. An authority will be required to issue a remedial notice to a landlord if it has reasonable grounds to believe that the landlord is in breach. If the landlord fails to comply with the notice, the local housing authority must, if the occupier consents, arrange the necessary action to ensure that the property is compliant. The local housing authority can also levy a civil penalty charge on the landlord of up to £5,000.

The regulations have been brought before this House because the Government want to increase the safety of private sector tenants. Setting a minimum standard for the testing and installation of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms will reduce the risks that tenants face from fire and carbon monoxide poisoning in the home.

Working alarms save lives—in the event of a fire in your home you are at least four times more likely to die if there is no working smoke alarm. Successive Governments and local fire and rescue authorities have made extensive use of non-regulatory approaches to increase the uptake of smoke alarms, including a series of highly effective public campaigns such as Fire Kills and the home fire safety checks. However, private rented sector tenants remain less likely to be protected by a working smoke alarm than any other tenant.

The department has also piloted alternatives to regulative approaches to increase the installation of carbon monoxide alarms. However, there are still high-risk properties without these alarms installed. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a serious and preventable form of poisoning. Each year there are around 40 deaths from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in England and Wales and in excess of 200 non-fatal cases that require hospitalisation. We estimate that the new regulations will save 26 lives and nearly 700 injuries per year. The majority of landlords act responsibly and protect their tenants with working alarms. However, a minority of private sector landlords have proved resistant to safety advice and recommended best practice. That is why the Government decided that it was necessary to introduce the draft regulations, to protect the tenants of these landlords.

A regulatory approach to the installation of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms was discussed as part of the Government’s discussion paper, Review of Property Conditions in the Private Rented Sector, and the majority of responses were in favour. The regulations aim to increase the safety of tenants by ensuring that they are not subject to death, poisoning or injury by a lack of smoke or carbon monoxide warning alarms.

The Government have funded local fire and rescue authorities to purchase a number of alarms for free distribution to landlords, encouraging all landlords to act responsibly towards their tenants as well as helping them comply with the regulations. Alongside these regulations, the department intends to continue to pursue its non-regulatory solutions in order to boost regular testing and uptake of alarms further across all sectors.

I turn now to the concerns of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The draft regulations were laid in March, before the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 received Royal Assent. The department, however, acknowledges that, as of 1 July, Ministers are required to include a review provision in secondary legislation that regulates business, or publish a statement of why it is not appropriate to do so. Following this, if the draft regulations are approved by Parliament and made, the department has committed to amending the regulations by adding a review clause at the earliest suitable opportunity.

These regulations prove the Government’s commitment to continue improvement and create a private rented sector that works for us all. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations, and in speaking to them I do not want to sound too harshly critical, but I fear that the carbon monoxide provisions do not go far enough. As the Minister said, there are on average 40 deaths a year from carbon monoxide poisoning in the home. The figures that I have—and I speak as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group—are that more than 4,000 hospitalisations a year are related to carbon monoxide poisoning in one form or another. The problem is that the available figures may seriously underestimate the size of the problem. University College London recently assessed that 6% of the London households it surveyed had a high or very high risk of exposure to carbon monoxide. Public Health England commented in March that,

“the burden of non-fatal accidental CO poisoning in England is higher than the burden from mortality”,

and that,

“the numbers of people admitted to hospital with CO poisoning in England are larger than previously estimated and do not appear to be reducing”.

The cumulative effects of low-level poisoning over time can indeed be lethal and can present as things such as strokes. The All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group, which I co-chair, recommended that,

“the Government should ensure that all coroners’ post mortems routinely test for carboxyhemoglobin … levels”,

to see how many cases are missed. I am grateful to the chief coroner who has had a very useful discussion with myself and others and the Gas Safety Trust, which is now piloting with Public Health England a study to develop a protocol for coroners to test for carbon monoxide at post-mortems so that we get an idea of the size of the problem.

The difficulty with the proposed regulations is that they relate to just over 330,000 private rented homes with solid-fuel-burning appliances, but this would protect only a small number of people—roughly 8.2% of those in private rented accommodation—because there is an equally high risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from other fossil-fuel-burning appliances, not just those that burn solid fuel. The regulations particularly name gas. The data collected from coroners’ reports in the past 19 years show that over 35% of deaths were related to mains gas. The requirement that landlords should install and maintain an audible carbon monoxide alarm in all properties with fuel-burning appliances is laudable; the problem is that it will not protect the remaining 92% of those living in private rented accommodation. Some 4.6 million homes will have other fossil-fuel-burning but not solid-fuel appliances, and are at risk not only from the appliances being badly maintained but from neighbours’ appliances being badly maintained with carbon monoxide leaking through brickwork, through cracks in the walls and cracked flues—and also at risk from some of the cooking practices from some of the families who have come here from abroad, who use tinfoil as a way in which to distribute heat over the top of the gas stove, when therefore the gas does not burn properly but burns to carbon monoxide. In that way, you get very high levels of carbon monoxide at about waist height, which is of course the level of the children’s heads and faces when they are in the kitchen with their mother.

The problem with testing alarms is, of course, that in asking that the alarm is tested every six to 12 months, I and others would like to see the onus on the landlords to test the alarms, and that they be required to do so annually. Can the Minister clarify what “proper working order” means? Does it mean that the sensor is checked and not just the battery? Only last week, a couple in Devon had a narrow escape from death after their alarm failed to register a leak, which was because of a faulty sensor. The problem is that alarms cannot be a substitute for proper installation and maintenance of fossil-fuel-burning appliances across the board.

I also have a concern that social housing is exempt. A Hackney Homes study of over 22,000 local authority homes found almost 5% carbon monoxide instance per thousand households. The study also found 35% of these instances resulted from a defective gas appliance. Therefore, while these regulations are step one, can step two include social landlords and then, after that, include that every home where there is a fossil-fuel-burning appliance, at the time when that appliance is installed, renewed or serviced, must be fitted with a carbon monoxide alarm? It should also be the case that those providing the service are proper registered Gas Safe services, and those selling the appliances should sell the carbon monoxide alarm at cost price, not at the huge mark-up that there is at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

No, it would not include Airbnb, but it would include those other types of premises that I mentioned. I hope that I have answered all the questions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I was waiting until the Minister had gone through the list of all the different types of accommodation. Could she undertake to ensure that, in particular, all universities have the information circulated to them? The university population comprises a large number of students, who go into privately rented accommodation around the UK, which is of very variable quality. In previous years, at the beginning of the autumn term, which we are now approaching, there have been deaths. On a cold night students have turned the heat on. There was a carbon monoxide problem and they died. They were not solid fuel appliances; they were usually gas appliances. However, in the wake of this important move—it is an important move; the Government have accepted that something has to be done—it would be very helpful if universities were asked specifically to alert students to the dangers and make them carbon monoxide-aware. Charities are doing this but they cannot cover the whole area.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness makes a very valid point. In fact, I remember the first day that my son moved into a student house with a boiler in his bedroom and I was terrified that he was going to die in the middle of the night. It is a really good point, which I shall take back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marlesford]

That presumably means that unless they come back this week or next week, because Parliament does not come back until 12 October, it would be impossible for this statutory instrument to be brought into effect on 1 October.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, perhaps I may suggest that there is other business to consider and it will be up to the Chief Whip to determine the timetable. We have a sitting Friday coming up, when it is possible to consider this matter. That will be up to the Chief Whip and we should now move on.

Motion negatived.