Building Safety Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

No.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Has the noble Lord been drinking?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I have not been drinking. I have had some Polos. In fact, I am not drinking anything at all.

I move on to the next campaign, which is electrical safety first. In fact, I am being bombarded with emails and letters. I promise noble Lords that I have had the briefing document from NAPIT—it followed up even today to check that I had it. That is also an incredible campaign.

I have to say that I particularly enjoyed the way the noble Lord, Lord Foster, introduced these amendments. His Amendments 122 and 123 have both been brought forward to ensure electrical safety in homes. I thank the noble Lord for raising this important matter and for his comments on the matter at Second Reading, but I am afraid that the Government cannot support these amendments.

We recognise the intention of these amendments, but we believe that they place a disproportionate burden on leaseholders in high-rise buildings. Under Amendment 122, high-rise leaseholders would be required to obtain and keep up to date an electrical installation condition report—an obligation we place on no other homeowner. Under Amendment 123, that obligation would also be placed on leaseholders who live in mixed-tenure high-rise buildings. “Mixed tenure” is defined as buildings where in addition to leaseholders there are also social housing or private rented tenancies. We believe that leaseholders living in their homes have a fundamental motivation to ensure that their home is safe and will take steps to ensure the safety of electrical installations. Therefore, we do not currently believe there is sufficient evidence to place further burdens on leaseholders in high-rise buildings.

I also assure the noble Lord that the intention of ensuring that residents take an active role in ensuring the safety of their building has already been met in the Bill. The Bill imposes a new active duty on residents not to create a significant risk of spread of fire or structural failure and empowers the accountable person to enforce these duties through the courts. These are systemic changes that are broader in scope than specific requirements for an electrical installation condition report; they will promote genuine collaboration between all parties in keeping their building safe.

The Government thank the noble Lord for raising this important point and will highlight in our guidance to accountable persons and residents the importance of considering electrical installations as part of their building safety decisions. With that assurance, I must ask him not to move his amendment.

On Amendment 124, I thank noble Lords for raising this important matter, but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. However, I can assure them that their intention is being met by the Government. In the Social Housing White Paper we committed to consult on electrical safety requirements in the social sector, and expert stakeholders participated in a Government-led working group last year to inform the content of that consultation. The working group considered the mandating of electrical safety inspections in all 4 million social homes, not just those in high-rise residential buildings, as moved by this amendment. The group also considered how to keep social housing residents safe from harm caused by faulty appliances. We will consider whether the best way forward to protect social residents from harm is to mandate checks and bring parity with standards in the private rented sector, and it is important that we work through all the issues to reach the right decision. The consultation will be published shortly.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

132A: After Clause 133, insert the following new Clause—
“Local authorities: impact of land contamination on building safety
Local authorities must assess, within their local areas, the risk posed by land contamination to building safety.”

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Noble Lords may have noticed that I am not my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, but I am here to move Amendment 132A and speak to Amendment 132B, both in her name. I am sure that the Minister is listening, because it is quite important that he agrees with me on this.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am listening.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am so sorry—I thank the noble Baroness.

These amendments create an obligation for local authorities to locate contaminated land in their areas and for the Government to review the management of contaminated land. This is the first parliamentary outing of what has been called Zane’s law. It is named for Zane Gbangbola, for whom the Truth About Zane campaign was also founded, which is still working. There is wide support for the campaign—from Sir Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham to the FBU, the CWU and the Conservative-controlled Spelthorne Borough Council—to get on the record the truth about the seven year-old’s death in Chertsey in 2014, when floods swept hideously toxic hydrogen cyanide into the family home from a nearby historical landfill site. That is not what the inquest verdict concluded in 2016, but the campaign continues to fight that inequality of arms and the illogic of that verdict.

Last year, Zane’s parents, Kye and Nicole, and their supporters took up an even broader issue: the question of why it was that they and the rest of the community had no knowledge of the danger of the historic landfill site near their home. I am old enough to remember Aberfan in 1966; it was a well-known site, but it was unstable. As most noble Lords probably know, 116 children and 28 adults were killed when the landslip came on to a school. What happened to Zane—and his father Kye, who was left paralysed by the hydrogen cyanide—could awfully easily happen to another family or a whole community.

The issue goes back to 1974, when the Control of Pollution Act first took control over waste disposal. However, before that came into effect, many dumps were quietly closed and, since then, have been pretty well forgotten, as campaigner Paul Mobbs explains in a disturbing video, which I do not have here with me. EU regulations on waste and pollution required the tightening of those controls under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Section 143 brought in an obligation on local authorities to investigate their areas and draw up

“public registers of land which may be contaminated”.

Section 61 gave local waste authorities powers to inspect closed landfills and clean them up if necessary. However, lots of new housing developments, in particular, are on old landfill sites. Under pressure, the Government held three consultations on contaminated landfill registers from 1991 to 1993, eventually deciding that the aforementioned Section 143 would not be enacted and all plans for public registers of contaminated sites would be dropped. The explanation given was cost and the desire not to place new regulatory burdens on the private sector.

Limited powers were brought in in 1995, although they did not come into force until 2000, which meant that when developers found contamination problems, public authorities often had to pay. But it got worse. In 2012, as part of the Cameron Government’s “bonfire of red tape”, to reduce the statutory burdens, the right of enforcement authorities to use the law was further reduced—the emphasis being on “voluntary” clean-up, with no real power to check it had been done. This is clearly a problem for existing buildings, but also for buildings being constructed right now. It is evident that there is a great risk at potential locations of new homes right around the country, from Carlisle to Cambridge, and Dudley to Newbury.

There is also the issue of the climate emergency and the new extremes of weather, particularly floods, but also heatwaves, that cause events such as that which tragically claimed young Zane’s life. To identify the size and scale of the problem, in every local authority in the land, there has to be a starting point to fixing it and preventing future risk to life. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for tabling her amendments, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I welcome her raising the important issue of contaminated land in this Committee. As always, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made some very powerful points—as did the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock—on the need for speeding up the process of decontamination. I believe the ambition to bring a version of Zane’s law on to the statute book is well intentioned but I consider that the policy intent behind these proposals is already met by existing legislation and statutory guidance.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right that Section 143 was repealed, but it was replaced by Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which provides a framework for identifying contaminated land in England and allocating responsibility for its remediation. It provides a legal definition of contaminated land and lays out the responsibilities of local authorities and the Environment Agency for dealing with it. These responsibilities include a requirement for local authorities to inspect their area to identify actively land that may be contaminated, to investigate and remedy contaminated land and to maintain a public register of information relating to contaminated land. This includes contamination from non-operational historic landfill sites and is regulated by local authorities. Further, Part C of the building regulations requires reasonable precautions to be taken by developers to avoid any risk to health and safety caused by contaminants in the ground where they are carrying out building work.

Lastly, assessment of contaminated land risk currently focuses on the impact of contaminated land on human health and the environment. Shifting focus on to buildings and building safety may dilute the aims of the existing framework. Given that this existing framework is already embedded into legislation and guidance, the proposed amendments regarding contaminated land would create unnecessary duplication and could cause confusion for local authorities. Therefore, while I appreciate the concerns of the noble Baroness, I ask her to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her response, and I will of course check the Environmental Protection Act, exactly what it does and what protection it gives. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock, for their support.

I care very much about this, even though this amendment is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, because it seems that the poor always suffer. This is one of those things where, if you live on an old industrial site or whatever, you are likely to have a much lower form of housing and much less protection in any case. If we are talking about levelling up, this would be a very good thing to do.

By the way, I want all your Lordships in this debate to know that this is a much friendlier debate than the one next door. It was a real relief to come in here out of there; there will of course be another vote soon.

I understand that this is not the moment to push this amendment, but it will probably come back on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw it.

Amendment 132A withdrawn.