Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

There is a shared desire in Parliament to ensure that absolutely everyone in our society lives somewhere decent, safe and secure. We are united in that commitment, and our thoughts naturally turn to the still unimaginable tragedy of Grenfell Tower. It should not have taken such a deadly fire, with such a terrible loss of life and suffering, for us to face up to the failures of building safety that have built up over decades under successive Governments. We are determined to do our duty by those whose lives were changed forever that night, right the wrongs of the past, and bring about the biggest improvement to building safety in a generation.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that cladding issues affect thousands of my constituents, as do the wider issues of fire safety and building safety. Will he make clear when the legislation will come forward on both fire safety and building safety? Will he also give us an update on the EWS1 forms? He told the House in November that there had been negotiations, through the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, with lenders, but many of my constituents say that they are still facing serious issues in acquiring those forms.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I shall certainly address the fire safety and building safety legislation as I advance through my remarks. With respect to the EWS1 forms, he will know that RICS has undertaken a consultation on the reform proposals, which ought to reduce some of the burden that some people face. That consultation closed on 26 January, and we await its results, but certainly as a result of the negotiations that we undertook with the industry and with RICS, some 450,000 people who might otherwise have been affected by the EWS1 forms are no longer obliged to complete them.

We know that, through no fault of their own, many leaseholders have found themselves in a most challenging, difficult and, indeed, agonising situation. Their situation is undoubtedly a complex one. Its roots extend over many years, and there are no easy answers.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that leaseholders will not be gagged by confidentiality clauses in any remediation contracts?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that question. He is absolutely right. Leaseholders will in no way be gagged by the standard contractual obligations between Government and applicants for Government moneys for remediation. We have written to anybody that has applied to the scheme to make it clear that if people wish to make comments about policy or about their own remediation situation, they should be allowed to do so. I say to my hon. Friend that should anybody from petty officialdom suggest that his or any other constituents do not speak out, they offer that petty official a good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon gesture in response.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I will make some progress; I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman later on.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and to outline the decisive action that we are undertaking to remove unsafe cladding, to strengthen the regulations and to support leaseholders. We established our building safety programme within days of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Its aim has always been to ensure that residents in high-rise blocks of flats are safe now and in the future. We have worked intensively and extensively to ensure that buildings with dangerous cladding are made safe as quickly as possible and, backed by £600 million of Government funding, real strides have been made in removing this unsafe aluminium composite material—ACM—cladding. Last year, despite the pressures of covid-19, more high rises with ACM cladding were made safe—either their works were begun or they were made safe—than in any previous year, which is nearly double the number in the previous year, 2019. Last month, we reached a major milestone. All high-rise social sector buildings have either had their unsafe ACM cladding replaced or seen the work get under way.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

My constituents in Ipswich are very pleased that they will be eligible for the waking watch relief fund, but it is only £30 million and many are concerned that it simply will not go far enough in addressing all buildings that need a new fire alarm system. What would the Minister say in response to their concerns?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend, who I know is a doughty campaigner for his constituents in Ipswich. I shall be addressing the issue of the waking watch and the support measures that we are putting in place as I move through my remarks.

I should also say that around 95% of all high-rise ACM buildings identified before the beginning of last year, across both the public and private sectors, are either fully remediated or have seen work commence on site. Indeed, all the buildings with unsafe ACM cladding in the constituency of the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) constituency have at least seen works start, if they are not already fully completed. These figures bear testament to the progress that we have made, the pressure that we have successfully exerted and the action that we have taken over the last three and a half years to get this job done. Where funding alone has not been enough to increase the pace of remediation, the Government have not hesitated to direct expert support to projects. Where building owners have still failed to take action despite that support, we have backed robust enforcement measures, spurring them to act without delay. Indeed, there have been 57 enforcement actions so far, 19 of which have been supported by the Government’s joint inspection team.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way very briefly, and then I must make some progress.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very grateful the Minister. He refers to building owners. Clearly, where there is a contractual obligation for building owners to remediate, that is absolutely right, but does he accept that lots of building owners have no contractual obligation—no legal obligation—to carry out that work? At Nova House in Slough, for example, the building owner simply gave it back to the local authority, which then issued service charges to the residents because there was no contractual obligation for anybody else to do the work. Perhaps we need to look at a wider community, rather than just building owners, to provide a funding solution for this problem.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on the nub of the matter, which is the complexity of the situation with which we and those people who find themselves in this difficult situation have to grapple, and that is what the Government are doing.

The Government initially focused our efforts on ACM cladding of the type used on Grenfell Tower because it poses the most severe safety risk on high-rise residential buildings, but we recognise that other forms of unsafe cladding, although less dangerous than ACM, should never have been used. Although many building owners have taken action, some have not. Too many building owners and managing agents in the private sector have been slow in getting remediation work started, which is why we introduced the £1 billion building safety fund to remediate high-rise residential buildings with unsafe non-ACM cladding as soon as possible and protect the leaseholders from burdensome costs.

We received 2,840 registrations for the fund, and have been able to make eligibility decisions on a significant number of them that were fully completed. It is disappointing that, despite our requirements having been made clear from the outset, many building owners have been unable to provide the basic information needed to advance works, including information such as the height of their building, the EWS systems on their walls and even sample lease agreements. We have been engaging with registrants and the industry bodies to understand the challenges they have in meeting the deadlines, and have set a new deadline of June based on what we now know about the registrants and their readiness to be able to deliver.

Building owners should be in no doubt: it is vital that dangerous cladding is removed as fast as possible, and the Government will not tolerate unnecessary delays. If they can collect the service charges, they can get the remediation on their buildings done. That applies just as much to small blocks of flats as it does to large ones, and we have given clear expert advice on a range of safety issues for buildings of all heights. Public funding has rightly been focused on remediating unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings of 18 metres-plus. That reflects the exceptional fire risk that certain cladding products pose at that height, as Dame Judith Hackitt observed in her report into fire safety. However, our guidance is unambiguous in stating that building safety is the responsibility of building owners, irrespective of whether their buildings are above or below 18 metres in height. The Government will continue to ensure that building owners—the ones who are ultimately responsible for making sure that these homes are safe—do the right thing.

We have targeted remediation funding where it is needed most: removing and replacing cladding on high-rise residential buildings. Interim safety measures such as waking watch have in many cases been used to ensure that the safety of residents in buildings with unsafe cladding is maintained. However, we are clear that waking watch regimes should only ever be used in the short term, because they are an entirely inadequate substitute for remediation. Some building owners have been using them for too long and have been passing on costs, which are unsustainable to leaseholders and residents, adding to the emotional distress and financial strain that they already suffer. We have been clear that that behaviour is unacceptable and cannot continue, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in December a £30 million fund to pay for the costs of installing alarm systems in buildings with unsafe cladding, thereby reducing the need for a waking watch. The fund is available across England. It is now open and I encourage those eligible not to delay but to start their applications now, so that we can urgently distribute the payments.

It is wrong and unjust for leaseholders to have to shoulder unfair costs to fix historical safety defects that they did not cause. That is why the Government have already set aside £1.6 billion in funding for cladding remediation. The funding was put in place precisely to ensure that the most dangerous types of cladding were removed as quickly as possible without imposing crippling bills on leaseholders. However, public funding does not absolve industry from taking the responsibility for the failures that led to unsafe cladding in the first place by putting materials on buildings that should not have been there.

We have seen many developers and building owners rightly taking responsibility for correcting those defects. They have done so in more than half of the high-rise private sector buildings with unsafe cladding. We absolutely expect developers, investors and building owners who have the means to pay to do the right thing and cover the costs of remediation of other unsafe cladding themselves without passing on the cost to leaseholders. However, in many cases, building owners or their managing agents have simply passed on significant remediation costs to leaseholders without regard to the affordability of those measures. That is why we have been accelerating the work to develop a financial solution to protect leaseholders from such costs. There is no quick fix. If there were, we would have done it long ago. It is complex and it involves many parties: leaseholders with different leases, developers, warranty holders, the insurance industry, the mortgage lenders, and the owners themselves. We have to find a solution that is right and proper, that demands of owners and developers that they put right the problems and defects they caused, that is fair to leaseholders who should not have to carry unfair costs for problems that they did not cause or envisage, and that is fair to the taxpayer, who is already shouldering a significant burden in remediating many buildings.

I can assure hon. Members that we will be making a further announcement on this important work “very shortly”, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at PMQs last week. We must recognise that Government funding alone cannot solve some of the deep-rooted issues surrounding building safety. As Dame Judith Hackitt concluded in her review, it is vital that we reform the entire building safety regime, and that means a fundamental change in the regulatory framework, in industry and in its culture.

We are committed to bringing forward the most significant building reform in almost 40 years, with two landmark pieces of legislation: the forthcoming Building Safety Bill that will create a more accountable system, and the Fire Safety Bill, currently before the House, which clarifies the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Taken together, these measures will improve the safety of residents in blocks of flats of all heights.

It may be worthwhile if, before I conclude, I commented on some of the amendments tabled to the Fire Safety Bill, particularly those by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), who is in his place. We fully understand what our hon. Friends are attempting to achieve in their amendments. We entirely understand that they want to remove or reduce the burden on leaseholders, and we wish to do the same. However, having looked at their amendments closely, it is clear to us that their scope, as currently drafted, would mean they would apply only to residents and leaseholders who have had a fire risk assessment undertaken, and not to residents who have suffered an incident or had works done for any other reason.  Nor are the amendments drafted in such a way as to allow them to be introduced without significant change to the Bill, both to the primary legislation and to the secondary legislation that must follow. As a result, the amendments would significantly impair the Bill’s progress through the House—they would delay it—and so, having looked carefully at my hon. Friends’ amendments, I encourage them to withdraw them.

The Building Safety Bill is the best mechanism to achieve my hon. Friends’ aims, which are to introduce a new and stronger regulatory regime for building safety in buildings of 18 metres or more in height, and for all construction products. The Bill will establish a new building safety regulator in the Health and Safety Executive, sitting at the heart of the reformed building programme. It will place clear legal duties on those who build and manage buildings in scope of the new regime to manage any risks that they create and, crucially, it will enable the regulator to enforce those laws.

In conclusion, high-rise buildings in this country should never have been fitted with dangerous or unsafe cladding. Successive Governments have failed to confront this issue, but it is this Government who are resolving it once and for all, making homes safer and protecting the residents from crippling costs, and at a pace that the severity of the situation demands. That is what we have already achieved: almost 95% of buildings identified at the beginning of last year with unsafe ACM cladding have now completed or are in the process of completing their remediation; we are advancing applications for the building safety fund; we are appointing specialist consultants to increase the pace of remediation; and we are introducing our additional landmark legislation. We will not let up. This work will be going on long after this Opposition day is over and long after the Leader of the Opposition has issued his tweet. We will not let even the pandemic, which is affecting our country and the world, slow us down. We will work to restore the inalienable right of everyone in this country to live somewhere that is decent, secure and, above all, safe—a place that they can rightly and proudly call home.