Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Ben Everitt and Stephen Timms

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. He is right. We are operating within a financial envelope, and one of the most pleasing things about the intervention from the Treasury announced last week is that it is what we would probably call an “elegant” financial solution. The transfer of risk away from the leaseholder to the building, combined with capping repayments at £50 a month, is possibly the most generous and neatest way that the Treasury could do that, and in effect it has gone a long way to protecting leaseholders from those unaffordable costs.

We have all been working towards a comprehensive solution for redressing those defects and reforming safety practices in the industry, in order to ensure that the heart-breaking events of Grenfell never happen again. The Bill is a key part of that, and significant progress has been made across the board, with ACM cladding either removed or in the process of being removed from every building in the social sector, and work on private sector buildings taking place at pace.

I also welcome the agreement on EWS1 forms, which will provide much-needed reassurance to leaseholders. We need such reassurance so that leaseholders face fewer burdens when they are trying to get on with their lives. We sometimes forget that we are here for people who have lives and worries, and we need to get out of their way and let them get on with their lives. These measures go a long way to addressing leaseholders’ largest concerns. This Bill and the draft Building Safety Bill are big bits of government, and more bits of government will be added. However, it is all necessary. Reference has already been made to the pre-legislative scrutiny carried out by the Select Committee, of which I was part. It was a big bit of government, but it is all necessary.

This scandal has highlighted the security of everyone living in buildings, and that must be the principal concern of this Bill and the draft Building Safety Bill. We must protect people’s lives where they are most at risk. There are some well-meaning amendments to the Bill but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) noted, they would slow down the pace of the Bill’s implementation. I do not want to see the Bill frustrated. It is crucial to building safety that we get it up and running. We have heard in this debate about the difference between pace and speed, and about getting it right. We need to get this right.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I support Lords amendment 2, and I hope we will be able to vote on the amendments that Members have tabled. I also hope the Government will finally honour the promises to leaseholders that they have been making for the past three years, and this Bill is an opportunity to do that.

I want to draw the attention of the House to a problem facing hundreds of my constituents living in flats recently built by Barratt at Waterside Park alongside the Thames and Upton Gardens on the site of the Boleyn Ground, where West Ham used to play. Freeholds have since been bought from Barratt by Aviva. The landlord agent is Mainstay, and the property manager is FirstPort. The buildings in both developments have a B1 EWS1 certificate. There is combustible material in the walling, but the risk is not sufficient to warrant requiring its replacement. The combustible material is in a vapour layer within the structure. That material is still being used in buildings being built now, and there has been no suggestion that builders should stop using it. Leaseholders in the development have had no problems in obtaining a mortgage, given the B1 certification.

These buildings clearly do not meet the criteria for the Government’s cladding fund. Nevertheless, the property managers made an application for funding to replace this combustible vapour layer. In the case of Upton Gardens, the application has been refused. In the case of Waterside Park, the decision is still awaited, but presumably that will be refused as well. However, the property managers appear poised to embark on replacing this combustible material at an estimated cost of £30,000 per flat, which they will charge to the leaseholders. They have appointed contractors and paid for preliminary work already, although work has not yet begun in earnest. The material to be replaced is being used in buildings being built at the moment. There is no requirement to replace it, and the residents do not want to fund its replacement, so why is replacement poised to go ahead? The only motivation the leaseholders have been able to identify is to provide fee income for the managers.

Will the Minister state clearly today that buildings with B1 certification should not be remediated without agreement of the leaseholders? At the start of the debate, he said that 95% of high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding have either been remediated or have workers on site doing the job. Can he tell us the actual figures? How many buildings have been remediated? How many buildings have workers on site? My constituents would be very interested to hear those numbers.