Healthy Homes Bill [HL]

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I too am delighted to support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his campaign to ensure that all our population can live in a safe, healthy home for life, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, pointed out.

He has listed 11 principles which should apply to new homes to make them healthy homes. After the Grenfell disaster and the following revelation that many other homes in high-rise buildings are also susceptible to fire, he is wise to have put fire safety top of the list, death being the single biggest risk to health. Whatever else we expect from our homes, we certainly should not expect them to kill us.

Despite the progress of the Building Safety Act 2022, there are still many outstanding issues which require clarity or action. Leaseholders are still having to pay for fire safety measures, other than cladding, up to the cap, but some freeholders are increasing service charges to cover costs over and above the cap. This cannot be right. It is still not mandatory for a resident with a disability in a high-rise building to have a personal evacuation plan. There are many blocks of flats with only a single staircase for evacuation in the case of fire. At the very least, it should be illegal to build new blocks with only a single staircase. Then there is the issue of electrical safety, referred to by my noble friend Lord Forster in his Private Member’s Bill that has just been debated. Many fires have been caused by electrical faults, yet still no electrical safety inspection is mandated unless you are trying to let your flat—a certificate is not required if you are selling.

Looking at the other principles, I regret that they apply to new homes only, but I understand why the Bill has been written that way. New homes are a minority of homes, but I wonder whether the healthy homes commissioner’s functions, as outlined in Clause 8, could be amended in Committee to include action on existing homes too. I agree with my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Stunell on that point.

I was interested to note that some of the principles in Clause 3 are linked to each other. If they were put in place, they would make a major contribution to certain government ambitions. I refer to paragraph (f) on a reduction in carbon emissions, paragraph (g) on resilience to climate change, and paragraph (k) on year-round thermal comfort. If all new homes were well insulated and double or triple glazed, we would make some progress towards net zero.

Unfortunately, there is no proper inspection that the energy efficiency as built is equivalent to the energy efficiency a home was designed to have. This does not happen, because developers can appoint their own building inspectors. I think it is shocking that local authority building inspectors are not allowed on site to ensure that buyers are getting what they paid for in respect of insultation. Developers are marking their own homework, which is one of the reasons why the advisory Committee on Climate Change has given a red rating on progress on reducing emissions from buildings. The policies are not there and neither are the support schemes.

The principles in the Bill are about new homes but, as I said, the majority of homes are not new. Government funding to support home insulation has been drastically reduced since 2015, and there is now no support at all for owner-occupiers who want to retrofit their homes. It can and should be done, though, especially now in the light of the threats to energy security and the eye-watering increase in the price of gas and electricity—another job for the healthy homes commissioner that could be added in Committee.

The Government’s welcome help with paying energy bills is like pushing £5 notes straight through the walls of homes into the atmosphere. It is money wasted unless we insulate both new homes and existing ones. Indeed, we must do so before we remove gas boilers and install heat pumps. Interestingly, better insulation would also achieve the principle in Clause 3(i), which requires homes to be free from unacceptable levels of

“intrusive noise and light pollution”.

On noise pollution, I can confirm from my own experience in a passive house that a well-insulated house is a quiet house—unless of course you fill it with a lot of noisy people.

Insulation is also important for the Government’s ambition of giving us an extra five years of healthy life. Older people in particular are susceptible to cold and hypothermia, so the principle in Clause 3(k)—year-round thermal comfort—is vital for that government ambition too.

Clause 9 deals with “affordable housing”, but defines it as

“affordable to those on average and below-average household incomes”.

The Government’s definition is 80% of market price, either to rent or buy, or 50% for social rents. If the Bill goes to Committee, which I hope it does, we will have to iron out that potential anomaly. Affordable should mean affordable.

All round, though, the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, if passed into law, would not only benefit the health, well-being and pockets of residents of new homes but help to achieve many of the Government’s key ambitions for us and future generations. It must be done.