Fire Safety Bill

Brendan Clarke-Smith Excerpts

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

[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.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con) [V]]

This is a short but critical Bill. The Lords amendments, while well-intended, are inappropriate for the Bill and would require the drafting of primary legislation to make them legally workable. To make things worse, if these amendments were added to the Bill, both the Government and the taxpayer could be exposed to action by the owners of these buildings. That must be avoided, and therefore the Bill must be watertight. It would be quite wrong if we had to withdraw the Bill because of this.

Those undertaking inspections and assessments need clarity, and the key to that is to keep the Bill short. It would also be wrong to delay the implementation of the judge’s recommendations from the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry, which the amendments would potentially cause. Legal advice must be accepted and forms the basis for making good on our promises, as does the input of independent experts.

Decisive action must be taken. The extra £3.5 billion committed by the Government, bringing total funding to £5 billion, is to be welcomed. This has culminated in a commitment to fully fund the replacement of unsafe cladding for all leaseholders in residential buildings of 18 metres and higher. While that is not the case for buildings between 11 and 18 metres, the new scheme will protect against unaffordable costs and limit them to £50 per month towards remediations. That also gives reassurance to banks and mortgage lenders. The new developer levy will ensure that developers make a contribution, and Gateway 2 should raise an extra £2 billion towards this.

As has been stated before, the Building Safety Bill will provide a new era of accountability for managing risk with the construction of these buildings. There will be tougher sanctions for those who fail to meet their obligations and a guarantee that it is they, not the taxpayer or leaseholders, who will remedy that. The Bill will also ensure that there is more transparency about the cost of maintaining a safe building, such as in the annual service charge. It is right that reasonable limits are placed on those charges and that leaseholders are protected from large-scale remediation costs. The Association of British Insurers has also backed the Government’s stance, as has Dame Judith Hackitt, the Government’s independent adviser on building safety.

The replacement of unsafe cladding and other remedial works must be taken seriously. The Fire Safety Bill alone cannot remedy that. Therefore, although these well-intentioned amendments are not appropriate, the wider approach must be considered and, indeed, welcomed.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

Nearly four years after the terrible Grenfell disaster, it is shameful that people are still living in unsafe buildings. More than 50% of blocks identified as having unsafe cladding have either not started or not completed remediation. That is causing sleepless nights for many across the country and deep anxiety about the threat of huge financial costs. The Government have failed to step in to protect leaseholders. The Minister said that these issues should be dealt with in another piece of legislation, but that comes across to the public as simply an excuse to kick these issues further down the road. As other Members have said, they are affecting our constituents now and should be tackled now.

I speak in support of the amendments in the names of the Leader of the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). Although the Government announced additional funding for cladding remediation on 10 February, leaseholders living in buildings under 18 metres will still have to cover some cladding-related costs. The fund fails to cover the huge cost of rectifying other fire safety defects and the necessary interim safety measures. According to the UK Cladding Action Group, the average total cost of building remediation for cladding and other fire safety defects is £49,000. The group states that 33% of affected flat owners earn £35,000 or less a year. Those people cannot afford to cover the cost of high interim safety measures, excessive insurance premiums, the Government’s piecemeal loan scheme for buildings under 18 metres with cladding or the huge cost of remediating other fire safety defects.

Luton South constituents have told me that living with the threat to their safety and facing exorbitant remediation costs has severely impacted their mental health. Some are on the brink of bankruptcy as they are unable to cover the cost or sell their homes. That is an issue across the country. Seventeen per cent. of respondents to an Inside Housing survey said that they are exploring bankrupts.

Let us be clear who we are talking about. The people affected are social workers, teachers, nurses and other key workers in our communities. Many are first-time buyers. It is unjust to leave leaseholders to bear the costs. Leaseholders bought their properties in good faith, and were unaware of the failures of the regulatory system. The Government must deliver on their promise to keep the public safe by urgently remediating the remaining unsafe buildings, ensuring that leaseholders do not have to foot the bill and implementing the recommendations from phase 1 of the Grenfell tower inquiry.