Fire Safety Bill

Clive Betts Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]]

First, may I allude to the work, which has just been mentioned, by my honourable friend and colleague, Jim Fitzpatrick? When he was a Member of this House, he did an awful lot of work in this area, and he deserves to be respected and remembered for that.

This is the first of two Bills to improve building safety, particularly in relation to fire. This Bill will be followed by the building safety Bill, which we understand will come in draft form. If that is the case, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which I chair, will look forward to undertaking pre-legislative scrutiny on it. We will certainly treat it with the urgency it deserves. The Committee has taken evidence in recent months from Dame Judith Hackitt on her report on fire safety, expert witnesses and Ministers. We recommended at an early stage that all combustible cladding should be removed from high rise residential buildings and we called for Government funding to enable that to happen. I am pleased that many of the Committee’s recommendations have been accepted, but it is unacceptable that at this stage there are still over 300 high rise residential buildings that have combustible cladding on them.

The Select Committee has just started a new inquiry into combustible cladding. We have had 1,300 responses to a survey. In those responses, we have been told by the respondents that 70% of them are living in buildings that still have combustible cladding on them. We have been told that in many of those buildings, fire breaks and fire doors are missing or inadequate. We have been told that many of the buildings have combustible insulation as well as combustible cladding. Nearly three years after Grenfell, it is not good enough that those buildings are still in that state.

It is welcome, however, that the Bill clarifies the responsibility of building owners with regard to those issues and defects. It gives powers to the fire service to enforce the regulations that are in place. One of the challenges highlighted by Dame Judith Hackitt is the need for responsible and accountable persons at all stages of a building’s life. A responsible and accountable person needs to be identified at the construction stage and then, when the building is built, for its maintenance and management. As the previous speaker, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), said, the question is: who is the responsible owner in each case? Is it the leaseholder? The real problem for leaseholders is that they are not normally the building owner. Is it the freeholder, who may not have legal responsibility, or is it the management agent? Do any of these bodies actually have the necessary skills to take on this role and, indeed, would a management agent want to do that job if they had to take on those liabilities? There are real challenges that are not addressed in this legislation.

On the role of the fire service, it is welcome that it will be given powers to enforce the regulations and make sure that buildings are safe, and that owners do their job. We heard in our Select Committee inquiry that the job of the fire service, in all matters, could be greatly enhanced and helped if every single property has a log book, which has the materials used in the construction of the building, the building’s layout and the responsibilities for the management of that building, including evacuation procedures. It would help the fire service to carry out enforcement and, of course, it would make it much easier for the fire service to deal with a fire when one breaks out in such a building.

Dame Judith highlighted the need for residents of these high-rise residential buildings to be fully involved in, informed of and consulted on matters to do with the safety of those buildings. The Select Committee completely agreed with her, and it is welcome that in the Bill, there is the possibility to go on and ensure that evacuation procedures in buildings are fully understood by the people who live in them.

Finally, to echo the comments that have been made, all this legislation we are discussing today and future legislation should have the simple objective of making sure that a Grenfell disaster never happens again.