Draft Higher-Risk Buildings (Key Building Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2023

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Higher-Risk Buildings (Key Building Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2023.

The regulations set out the high-level information to be provided to the Building Safety Regulator and clarify for which parts of a building individual accountable persons are responsible. The regulations are part of the new building safety regime created by the Building Safety Act 2022. They are a fundamental part of our ongoing reforms to ensure that all residents’ homes are places where they are safe and can feel safe.

I will provide some context and background to these important regulations. After the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Government appointed Dame Judith Hackitt to conduct an expert review of the building safety regime. Her review showed that there are significant issues in the industry. She identified that cultural and regulatory change was needed in order for the industry to be fit for purpose.

Dame Judith recommended a new approach to managing fire and structural safety risks in higher-risk buildings. She advised that a new, strengthened regulatory regime should be brought forward to improve accountability, risk management and assurance for higher-risk buildings. She also identified the lack of information about higher-risk buildings as an issue. In her report, she set out that access to up-to-date information is crucial for higher-risk buildings. Her report sets out that the new regulatory regime needs to provide closer, more robust and more expert scrutiny of higher-risk buildings. To do that, the regulator will need accurate and up-to-date information about such buildings.

The Government accepted Dame Judith’s recommendations and brought forward the Building Safety Act, which received Royal Assent in April 2022. The Act establishes the new regime, which creates stronger oversight of higher-risk buildings and puts stronger legal duties on those responsible for the safety of higher-risk buildings throughout their lifecycle. It also brings forward stronger enforcement and sanctions to deter and rectify non-compliance.

The regulations set out requirements for occupied higher-risk buildings. In particular, they set out the high-level building information—that is, the key building information—that will need to be provided to the Building Safety Regulator. This key building information will help the regulator to fulfil its duties under the 2022 Act.

The Building Safety Act sets out that all occupied higher-risk buildings will have at least one clearly identifiable accountable person. The accountable person will be responsible for assessing, managing and mitigating building safety risks. If an occupied higher-risk building has only one accountable person, they will automatically become the principal accountable person. Where the building has two or more accountable persons, the one responsible for the repair of the structure and exterior of the building will be the principal accountable person. The regulations clarify which accountable person is responsible for different parts of a building in cases when there is more than one accountable person.

The regulations are split into two parts. First, they establish the key building information that must be provided to the Building Safety Regulator by the principal accountable person.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Before the Minister moves on from the business of accountable persons, does she share the concern of many of my constituents that, by appointing the accountable person, the Government are doing one important thing and setting out that someone is actually responsible? The problem has been that the buck has been passed all around. But in doing that, the Government are passing to the residents—the commonhold association itself—the responsibility that should properly lie with the developer of the building, whose responsibility it was to ensure that the building was constructed properly in the first place. In many cases, it was not.

[Dehenna Davison]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that one of the key issues is the clear line of accountability. That is something that the regulations and the Building Safety Act seek to rectify. I am happy to write to him with further clarity on the role of developers, if that would be helpful, but the key point is to ensure that a person in the building now is responsible for the building now and has that clear line of accountability. However, I will follow up in writing to provide more clarity.

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[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will of course ask the Department to identify said information and pass it on to him, if that is something he wants specifically for his constituency. May I say what a great way that was to garner information?

I have outlined a few of the things that the regulator must be informed of. It must also be provided with information about the materials used in the building—that is, the materials used in the external walls, the external wall insulation, the roof, and any fixtures attached to the external walls and roof. Information will also have to be provided about the type of evacuation strategy for the building, such as “stay put” or simultaneous evacuation, and the fire and smoke control equipment in the building. All that information will be pivotal in helping the Building Safety Regulator to go about its day-to-day functions and duties, understand typical features and trends in the existing stock of buildings, and identify safety concerns in the future. Guidance will make clear exactly what information is required to meet the legal obligation.

[Barry Gardiner]

Clearly, the building regulator will accrue a huge amount of information. Will the Minister set out how many building regulators there will be? Will there be only one? If so, what facilities and resources will be made available to the regulator to enable it to cope with the influx of information and sift it so that the safety end is achieved?

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[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your rigorous chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. Here we have huge responsibilities being placed on individuals or commonhold associations without the necessary power to do what is being obligated. Those who have engaged with leaseholders over many years know that communications between residents in a large tower block often take huge lengths of time. They are not instantaneous. The idea that within 28 days the appropriate person will be able to ensure that they have all the information from other residents is fanciful. Communications just do not work like that in tower blocks.

That will discourage leaseholders from taking over the management of their building. Many of them are labouring under problems with their existing managing agents, such as huge increases in their service charges or often completely inappropriate items billed to them erroneously. They therefore want to be enfranchised and to take on the responsibility as managing agents themselves. With that, however, will come the new responsibilities, which are incredibly onerous.

My hon. Friend was absolutely right to ask about penalties. Those who exercise those responsibilities, or try to, have to know what will happen to them if they fail to do so—not wilfully or through negligence, but because it is simply not possible to secure all the appropriate information in the timeframe. There is then the question of what happens if they cannot access the information. As my hon. Friend said, this is about not just fire doors, which are at least there physically and can be seen, but internal fire stopping, which may not have been put in during construction. That is one of the things that makes a building most susceptible to fire, yet it is not mentioned in regulation 8. That is essential if people are to fulfil the duties that the Government are placing them.

Ultimately, this issue goes back to where responsibility lies. It is great that we are trying to nail that down, and I appreciate what the Government are trying to do, but there are real, practical constraints. We need to know what the penalties are and how the regulations will be enforced.

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[Dehenna Davison]

I will follow up on that point in writing after the Committee rises, if that is acceptable.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again; she is being generous in engaging in debate. In answering the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich asked about fire doors, she referred to regulation 18, which talks about

“fire and smoke control equipment”

and specifically excludes that which is

“provided by a resident for their own use.”

“Equipment” does not sound as if it includes fire stopping. Will the Minister please clarify where responsibility lies for fire stopping in a building?

[Dehenna Davison]

As I have highlighted, guidance will be provided, and we hope that it will provide the clarity that is needed. Again, though, if we have more information, I will follow up in writing to provide the hon. Gentleman with further assurances.

I am grateful to hon. Members for their engagement, and I am particularly grateful to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, for his constructive approach. Right across the House, we recognise how crucial this issue is, and I am grateful that we are moving forward to tackle it together. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.