Building Safety Bill (First sitting)

Brendan Clarke-Smith Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Then I will bring in Brendan, who is just catching my eye.

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

Q Sir Ken, good morning. Given that, thankfully, the number of fires and deaths in buildings is low—although ideally it would be zero, of course—do you think the market has overreacted?

Sir Ken Knight: It is a very fair question. That is in the area of probability or likelihood of risk. Most of us do not run our lives in terms of anything other than likelihood, whether it is flying in an aeroplane or crossing a road. We do not tend to judge the catastrophic risk of those. There is a good deal of risk aversion at the moment, which is natural after the tragedy at Grenfell, but unfortunate, because, as you say, last year fire deaths in the home were at a 40-year low. If we think of the past year, where for the first time most people were in their homes and not in offices, that is quite a significant statistic.

Even in high-rise residential flats, most fires occur in the room and flat of origin and do not spread beyond the flat of origin, and most deaths do not occur outside the flat of origin either. That is not to make light of all the deaths that occur, of course. I think the question that you have asked is key for me in ensuring that we do not suggest there is no risk below 18 metres—going back to the previous height issue—nor is it all risk above 18 metres. It is a risk-based, proportionate approach, according to a competent risk assessor. What we have seen at the moment are both lenders and insurers moving that risk aversion to the point that people in their homes feel unsafe when they are not, are anxious about living where they are, and are finding the effect on the value of their flats very difficult. I think we have to bring the pendulum back to a proportionate approach, allowing competency and risk assessment, not a binary “is it safe or not safe?”

Dan Daly: What I would add to that is the fact that there have been some well-intentioned actions over time in order to keep people safe and try to build some reassurance back into the built environment. People have seen Grenfell, and they have since listened to the evidence at the inquiry. Quite understandably, public confidence is undermined, but what we are now seeing is undoubtedly that some of the measures, whereby those costs are being passed back to leaseholders, are causing actual harm. The effort to protect people from potential harm is now generating real harm to people’s mental health and wellbeing, so there needs to be a reaction in order to try to bring that back to the centre. Fires are mercifully rare, but as a professional fire officer, I can say that one fire is too many and one fire death is too many, wherever it occurs. I understand the need to bring the pendulum back, as Ken has described.

[The Chair]

Daisy has a supplementary question on this point.