Fire Safety Bill (Second sitting)

David Simmonds Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Let me start by saying that the Opposition support the Bill. We are here to be constructive. Although clearly we wish that things had gone faster and that we had been able to do more, we support the Bill and want to make it the best that it can be. On Second Reading there was agreement across the House on what needs to be done to fix some of the problems with the legislation. Amendment 2 relates to one of those problems, which has been raised by many of the organisations that have submitted written evidence.

I associate myself with everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, who is an expert in this area. He is absolutely right that we need to ensure right at the outset that we include parts of the building not currently listed in the Bill.

Amendment 2 would do what amendment 1 would do, but in a slightly different way. As the explanatory statement states, the amendment would make the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 apply

“to all parts of a building that contains two or more dwellings, other than those dwellings themselves,”

Not just the

“parts that come within the meaning of structure, external walls or common parts.”

I had a long conversation with the London Fire Brigade about how we define “common parts”. Introducing that term without a definition alongside the definition of “domestic premises” in article 2 of the fire safety order could lead to confusion about what it means and could add an additional layer of complexity to what is already quite a difficult landscape.

In the past, “common parts” has been used to refer to entrance halls, corridors or stairways in a block of flats, but it does not necessarily cover areas such as lift motor rooms, service risers, roof voids and other potentially high-risk areas, as well as fire safety facilities that are inside individual dwellings but used in common for the protection of the entire premises, such as sprinklers and detection systems.

This is not a new issue. Following the Lakanal House fire, the coroner recommended that there be clear guidance on the definition of “common parts” in buildings containing multiple domestic premises. Dame Judith Hackitt has also recommended that the assignment of responsibilities in blocks of flats be clarified.

The purpose of the Bill, as we discussed this morning and as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith has already mentioned, is to provide clarity on what is covered under the law. Without really clear definitions, there will be new questions of interpretation, and we will not achieve what we are setting out to achieve. There will be the potential for confusion and conflict.

Simply put, the absence of a clear definition creates opportunities for those who might try to game the system. We know that the system has not worked in the past, because people have been able to do things that nobody intended them to do. We want to make it crystal clear that the provisions cover all common parts of the building, and want to make it clear that “common parts” includes all the other spaces, such as lift motor rooms, that are not set out in the Bill.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I very much sympathise with the motivation behind the amendments, but I am unpersuaded by the argument. There is sometimes a risk of seeking to make very precise what in reality is not at all precise.

Following the Grenfell Tower disaster and the Lakanal House fire, the Local Government Association, working with local authorities across the country, commissioned a huge piece of work to try to understand the inherent risks in tall buildings, but also in other types of building in the public estate, and to learn lessons that might be relevant to the private sector.

I want to refer to a particular type of structure known as a Bison block, which is common in west London and found across my constituency, and which my local authority has spent a good amount of time examining. It is particularly relevant to amendment 2, which is seeking a very tight definition. The blocks were large panel system builds. They are quite common across the capital and in other parts of the country.

A great many of these blocks were extensively refurbished, particularly in the 1980s, because they are not especially attractive buildings and in the past there have been concerns about their structural integrity and safety. The refurbishment was undertaken by a process that we might understand as cladding. In this case, a brick skin was erected around the entire outside of the building. New windows were installed, and the structure now looks considerably more attractive than when it was first constructed.

To manage the risk of fire spreading in the cavity between the floor where a fire occurs and another floor, a steel band needs to be installed between each storey’s-worth of brick structure. It ensures that a fire that gets into that cavity cannot spread up or down. On examination following the Grenfell disaster, it was discovered that some of the window installations, for example, had been changed, which had had an impact on the integrity of the fire safety system. The banding had been constructed many years ago. The challenges of inspecting something that is inside a sealed brick structure, the natural dilapidations of time and the consequences of a small amount of heave or subsidence around the site would all have had an impact on it. That is a significant issue for those of us who are concerned about the safety of those high-rise towers.

I am concerned that the amendment, by seeking to be very precise, could open the door to our not including a number of the elements that we would see in a variety of structures around the country. I have heard the Minister speak about this before when questions have been asked of him. I am satisfied that one of the motivations behind the Government’s choice of wording was to make the definition sufficiently broad that all the issues were captured. To ensure that the definition relates to all the different, unique types of structure out there, many of which there may be little evidence of on the public record today, it may be wise not to narrow our definitions too much. We could end up with a lawyers’ bonanza of arguments about whether, for example, the provision covers the steel band structure for fire safety in a Bison block. For that reason, I am unpersuaded of the merits of the amendment.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I am very conscious, not least as the former London Assembly member for the area, that it is less than two weeks since we marked the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, which saw the worst loss of life in a residential fire since the second world war. I am sure that all those who died, the bereaved and the survivors will be in our minds as we do our work this afternoon and into the future.

On the day of the publication of the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 report, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister accepted in principle all 12 recommendations addressed to the Government directly. Eleven of the recommendations will require implementation in law. The Fire Safety Bill, which will amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, is an important first step toward enacting those recommendations. As has been mentioned, the Bill is short and technical; it clarifies the scope of the order. We appreciate that this is the first Bill on fire safety since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and we intend to legislate further.

It is vital that regulatory standards and public confidence be increased across the whole system of building and fire safety. Next month we will publish a consultation on the implementation of the phase 1 recommendations that call for changes in the law, alongside proposals to strengthen other aspects of the fire safety order. I assure the Committee that the Bill is the start, not the finish, of a process through which we intend to improve the fire safety order.

Alongside the consultation, there is the building safety Bill, which will be presented in the House for pre-legislative scrutiny before the summer recess. That Bill will put in place new and enhanced regulatory regimes for building safety and construction products, and will ensure that residents have a stronger voice in the system. It will take forward the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review of building regulations and fire safety.

Our programme of work is not limited to legislation, of course. It includes establishing a remediation programme, supported by £1.6 billion of Government funding, through which we will remove unsafe cladding from high-rise residential buildings. We are undertaking, in conjunction with the fire service, a building risk review programme for all high-rise residential buildings in England by December 2021, supported by £10 million of new funding.

This Fire Safety Bill is also a move towards enhancing safety in all multi-occupied residential buildings by improving the identification, assessment and mitigation of fire risks in those buildings. It will resolve the differing interpretations of the scope of the fire safety order in such buildings and provide clarity for responsible persons and enforcing authorities under the order. It will make it clear that the order applies to the structure, external walls—including cladding—balconies and flat entrance doors in multi-occupied residential buildings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

The new clause does what the Government say will come later: it puts on the face of the Bill the recommendations made in the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 report. At the beginning of June, the MHCLG announced that it was preparing to open a public consultation on recommendations for new fire safety regulations emerging from the Grenfell Tower inquiry. In a letter to Martin Moore-Bick, the Prime Minister gave assurances that action on the findings of the inquiry’s first report “continues at pace”. However, the Government had already promised in October 2019 to implement the inquiry’s recommendations in full and without delay. Failing to include the simpler recommendations for the Bill, such as inspections of fire doors and testing of lifts, is a breach of their commitment to implement the recommendations without delay.

Only this week we saw alarming statistics that underline the urgency of implementing the recommendations. Of more than 100,000 doors in about 2,700 buildings across the UK inspected by the fire door inspection scheme in 2019, 76% did not comply with building regulations and about one in six, or 16%, were not even proper fire doors. Nearly two thirds, or 63%, of the buildings also had additional fire safety issues. Those are huge challenges. We need to move as quickly as possible to implement the recommendations.







Earlier this month, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said that the Bill

“provides a firm foundation upon which to bring forward secondary legislation”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2020; Vol. 676, c. 41WS.]

The Minister has taken the same approach, but there is no timetable for when everything else will happen. There are lots of committees, consultations and groups looking at these things, but it is not acceptable that after the promise of “without delay” in October 2019, we still have not moved on those issues by the middle of summer 2020.

I do not understand, and it would be good for Minister to explain, why we would not put such provisions in the Bill. They have the support of the organisations that we heard from this morning. It is just a case of putting things up front in the legislation, rather than waiting for an undefined time that may or may not come at some point in the future.

The new clause would require an owner or manager to

“share information with their local Fire and Rescue Service in respect of each building for which an owner or manager is responsible about the design of its external walls and details of the materials of which those external walls are constructed…in respect of any building for which an owner or manager is responsible which contains separate flats, undertake regular inspections of individual flat entrance doors…in respect of any building for which an owner or manager is responsible which contains separate flats, undertake regular inspections of lifts and report the results to their local Fire and Rescue Service; and…share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents of the building.”

It just pushes faster and implements more quickly the action that the Government have committed to implementing. I press the Government to accept that that is possible, or to set out exactly when those things will become part of legislation.

[David Simmonds]

I have similar feelings about new clause 6 as I had about amendment 1. There is a risk that by seeking to be precise, we may create additional gaps in the legislation. Looking at the list, it would be clear to anybody with experience of the issue in a wider context that many other issues would come into consideration in such circumstances.

For example, the London Borough of Hillingdon had to go to court on 16 occasions last year to gain access to tenants’ properties to undertake essential safety-critical work on gas installations. If we were to define the duties that we are placing on the responsible individuals, the list would be extremely long. I have heard the Minister talk on the issue and I know that, with his local government experience, he is well aware of the context.

The properties to which the legislation will apply are hugely diverse, as are the risks that they offer. I therefore strongly believe that the new clause is another example where we are better off having a broader-brush piece of legislation that provides the opportunity to catch every set of circumstances flexibly, rather than being unnecessarily specific and risking missing out things that might turn out to be safety-critical.

[Andy Slaughter]

Thank you, Sir Gary. I apologise for referring to you as Mr Streeter throughout.