Building Safety Bill

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, never again must we be faced with the shocking sight of a tower-block of flats being consumed by raging flames. We watched in horror those devastating scenes, and later listened to the harrowing stories from the survivors of that awful conflagration. Their stories are seared in my memory, and I echo many noble Lords’ comments on this.

This Bill proposes welcome improvements to regulations, which should have been foreseen long ago and acted on. It is to our shame that it has taken the loss of the lives of 72 people for us to see what a terrible dereliction of duty the whole building establishment had allowed to occur over many years. We watch today, almost five years on from the appalling Grenfell tragedy, cladding that was known at the time to be lethal still having to be removed from high-rise buildings, because only now are the Government facing up to their responsibilities and offering help in the shape of a £5 billion fund for those living in the most vulnerable or, as the Bill puts it, higher-risk buildings.

It also proposes revising the regulatory framework for construction products, I therefore hope that we will never see the likes of Kingspan, which provided much of the insulation in the cladding on Grenfell Tower, being a chosen business. That insulation, Kooltherm K15, was known to be lethal and Kingspan’s employees knew it too, as the inquiry found out. Another company, Celotex, used hidden, non-combustible boards to make sure that it got through safety checks—and so it goes on. We can only hope that the Bill will prevent rogue companies such as these getting any building contracts for this type of work ever again. Can the Minister assure me that the new building regulations will root out those contractors long before they can be allowed to build again?

The current Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the right honourable Michael Gove, has finally woken up to the fact that the Government’s proposed loan scheme for all the remediation work was a complete non-starter, and stated that no householder living in their own flat would have to pay a penny to fix unsafe cladding. He gave the building industry, as we have heard from the Minister, two months to agree to a financial contribution scheme, but only for buildings between 11 and 18 metres in height. Has the industry agreed a suitable financial contribution? What is going to happen to the thousands of leaseholders of flats that are less than 11 metres high, who also have to face the cost of removing their unsafe cladding? Will the Government ensure that they, too, are compensated, after years of trying to get housing associations and private landlords of these properties to take responsibility for the removal of the cladding? Those tenants have for far too long been ignored and vilified for asking too many questions and making a fuss.

Reading the Bill, it seems to me that there are large number of scrutineers of future building projects. I worry that it could be a case of too many cooks being able to mask rogue elements of the building trade, allowing them to slip through the regulatory net. As my noble friend Lord Shipley has stated, there are the Building Safety Regulator, registered building inspectors, the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, the Industry Competence Committee, authorised officers, the Health and Safety Executive, duty holders, principal accountable persons—who have to appoint building safety managers—all before we get to the Golden Thread through the gateway regime, which, as I understand it, is supposed to ensure compliance throughout the whole of a new build.

Clauses 80 to 84 explain this, and continuing clauses set out the responsibilities of the accountable persons. Those clauses are interesting to me, and I am concerned to know how they will work in practice. A great deal of responsibility will rest on the shoulders of these people, and I worry that this position could be used as a scapegoat in any future structural failings of a building. Clauses 100 to 103 set this out.

I share the concerns expressed by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors that the Bill may create a two-tier system of regulation—especially, as I mentioned earlier, given that no provision has yet been made for the risks in low-rise buildings. It goes on to emphasise that the industry does not yet have qualified individuals to undertake the onerous duties of the accountable person. What is the Government’s response to that? Where are they going to get those highly skilled people? The Chartered Institute of Building was equally concerned about these issues, which it believes will be crucial to the practical implementation of the Bill.

Overall, we must welcome this Bill as another step in the long journey of holding our building regulators and suppliers to account for past catastrophic failures, but it is in the implementation of all its proposals that we will be watching carefully and assessing whether this Government keep their word and ensure that the awful sight of the Grenfell Tower in flames will never happen again.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th February 2022 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

My Lords, we will also hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief and I, too, wish to speak to the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Pinnock and Lord Stunell. I strongly support them.

At Second Reading, I commented on the large number of people who are going to be accountable for the safety of buildings when the new regime comes into force. My main concern was around the person described as the “principal accountable person” because I felt that that person had just about everything to do with the safety of buildings and that that responsibility would rest on that person’s shoulders. I was interested in the comments of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Chartered Institute of Building, which stated that the industry did not yet have qualified individuals who could undertake such incredibly important and probably statutory duties that the position would necessitate. Perhaps I may therefore ask the Minister what the Government are going to do to help the industry find those people and how they propose to go about training them with the necessary skills that will be required.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I obviously support what my noble friend Lady Pinnock said in relation to the training and independence of building inspectors. That is perhaps the most obvious of the necessities which we now know exist, as far as plugging the gaps in the current regime is concerned.

I want to focus my remarks on Amendments 116 and 119A, where mine is the lead name and which deal with fire risk assessors. We have never had before, in capital letters, something called “Fire Risk Assessors”. There is no such profession and this will clearly be a significant gap, which has to be filled very quickly if we are to achieve the aims of the Bill. We know that, right across the industry, there are shortages of skills, qualifications and competence. Above all, there is a shortage of capacity. One problem that I know the Minister has had to confront is that it has been difficult to get effective surveys of high-risk buildings because the people have not been available to do them. There are no such people, or at least insufficient people, with the right competences, skills and so on to do so.

I do not know whether the Committee will have seen the reports of the fire risk assessment that was done in advance of the Grenfell fire. The housing association had a fire risk assessor and he made a fire risk assessment. It turned out that he was a firefighter but not qualified in fire risk assessment. In order to secure the job, he had manufactured a set of initials which were accepted by the housing association as proof of his skill and capacity to assess fire risks. This is reported in the public evidence sessions of the Grenfell inquiry. It was further revealed that he was commissioned not just to assess the Grenfell Tower; he was commissioned by the housing association to be its risk assessor for the whole of the housing stock of that organisation.

That is where the importance of having a register becomes immediately apparent. You need a register of qualified people for two reasons, which overlap: first, you are not allowed to practise as an assessor unless you are on that register; secondly, as a purchaser of the skills of fire assessment, for instance a housing association, you need to be sure that the person who offers you a cheap deal to do some quick fire assessment work is somebody who is qualified, prepared and competent to do so. Amendment 116 is trying to establish clearly in the Minister’s mind the need to make this process of regulation transparent, with a publicly published register. We are obviously probing at this point, but I hope the Minister can give us some satisfaction that, if not in the Bill then in parallel with it, these matters will be dealt with.

What I have said about fire assessors may be the most dramatic and acute of the problems, but the building control function was of course also exposed as woefully insufficient in the case of the Grenfell Tower. Bearing in mind that it was a local authority building control function being exercised, it is also true that the person who was the responsible officer did not once visit that tower to make an inspection. It was purely from a desk study of drawings which had been provided to him. There is clearly a tremendous gap. Even when somebody is appointed to do a job, they may not have either the skills or competences, or they may not have the attention span or the time, to give effective service to the cause of fire safety. I hope very much to hear from the Minister that he takes these matters to heart and has in mind finding a way of establishing how this can be put right.

Our Amendment 119A is about training of fire assessors on the same basis as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, moved on the training of building inspectors. Every one of the professionals engaged in this fire safety regime needs to be a qualified and competent person. That is so obvious that it hardly needs to be said, but at the moment we are woefully short of the number of people we need. Indeed, it has already been referenced that the RICS and others have pointed out that, at the moment, there are not enough people with the competencies to step forward if the Bill comes into force as the Minister intends.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Harris of Richmond and Lady Brinton, are taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 120 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jolly and other noble Lords and would just like to make a few comments.

At Second Reading, we heard how important it was to ensure that BS 5395-1 was accepted. I am disappointed that the Government have not yet made a concession on this. In fact, there is no mention at all of stair safety in the Bill. In the 2010 legislation, the standard was put in place only as a recommendation, as we have heard. It is now time to put it in this Bill as a requirement and ensure that all new buildings comply from 2024, as my noble friend Lady Jolly has indicated. We know that hundreds of lives may be saved every year—estimated at about 700 in England alone. If this standard were adopted for all buildings, we could prevent the hospitalisation of around 43,000 more people. Think what amount of money that would save in costs just to the NHS, never mind the trauma suffered by the families of those injured.

I ought to declare a small interest here, as I have increasing difficulty using the stairs in my own home, as they are both steep and deep. In fact, I am having to have another handrail put in so that I can use them safely.

It is vitally important that stairs in high-rise buildings, indeed any communal building, are of sufficient depth and width to allow numbers of people to use them simultaneously in an emergency. We know that the horrors of the Grenfell Tower disaster were exacerbated by totally impractical stairs in the building. I cannot believe that any building company or architect designing a new high-rise building would rely on just one staircase for multiple flats. That would be a complete dereliction of duty, in my opinion. In the event of an outbreak of fire in a high-rise building, there will inevitably be a rush to get out down the stairs, as lifts will be out of use. It is therefore inevitable that people will fall. BS 5395-1 should be put into law during the passage of this Bill and I urge the Minister to accept this immediately.

[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.