Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the purpose of tabling this amendment is twofold. First, it is to shine a beacon of light on a building scandal that has recently fallen out of the national spotlight. Secondly, it is to urge the Government to use this Bill to exert further pressure on those who caused the Grenfell Tower tragedy, where, I remind the House, 72 people lost their lives.

This amendment is not about pointing the finger of blame at this or past Governments. It is about seeking to put more pressure on those who created the conditions in which people died and which many leaseholders now have to endure, consequent on building safety failure.

What are the facts? The MHCLG estimates—I note that there is no current definitive figure—that between 5,900 and 9,000 buildings over 11 metres have unsafe cladding. This means that over a quarter of a million individual flats and perhaps nearly half a million people are affected, and that is just for those blocks over 11 metres, which are the subject of the Building Safety Act.

According to government figures for August this year, 1,927 blocks have had their remediation completed and a further 750 have started, but that leaves many thousands of leaseholders in limbo. I accept that the Government have attempted to improve this position with the remediation acceleration plan, alongside a promise for a remediation Bill. Can the Minister tell the House when that Bill is likely to be introduced?

The action plan commits to completing all remediation of blocks over 11 metres by 2029. That is a full 12 years after the Grenfell Tower fire. Meanwhile, leaseholders are paying the price for a situation that in no part is of their making. They are paying for it in extortionate insurance bills, in ever-rising service charges, and in knowing that they have no way out as their flats do not sell. For some, this has had very tragic consequences. The mother of one of those who ended their life as a direct result of this enormously stressful situation is sitting in the Gallery today and listening to this debate.

This Bill is an opportunity further to address the building safety scandal by putting more pressure on those who created these dangerous living conditions. Amendment 87FD in my name and co-signed by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, seeks to require that construction companies that have signed up to the responsible actors scheme agree to the full remediation of all buildings—that includes those under 11 metres—before they are able to proceed with further major developments. This must be achieved at no cost to leaseholders. For those living in blocks of under 11 metres, currently the costs fall on them, despite their not having created the building scandal in any way. The major housebuilders are well able to afford to pay for the crisis they created, with annual operating profits being in the high hundreds of millions of pounds.

The noble Lord Young of Cookham wished to speak in support of this amendment, but, unfortunately, he is currently speaking in Grand Committee. He has asked me to say that he is in complete support of the amendment and will vote in the Lobby in support of it if a vote is called. I look forward to the Minister’s response, but if I am not satisfied that more can be extracted from those who created the crisis that is putting lives at risk, I will test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which I have added my name. We have both spent many years trying to persuade the Government that a clearer and more comprehensive solution is needed to protect everyone affected by the building safety crisis. Noble Lords will know of my professional insights into this matter as a chartered surveyor and of my previous attempts to get fair treatment for innocent homeowners. .

I continue to receive mail from home owners, small investors, property managers and conveyancers who are utterly dismayed at the complexity, uncertainty and capricious nature of the funding under government schemes, which involve matters of building height, cladding combustibility and unseen and previously unknowable compartmentation issues, with funding applying differentially to various classes of ownership or being dependent on the freeholder’s assets, plus identification of the person responsible and whether that person has effective agency in relation to remediation. In addition, there are two parallel standards of remediation at work.

Some noble Lords will recall that during the deliberations on the Building Safety Bill, I convened a briefing for Peers. We were addressed by the late Amanda Walker, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, was, I think, making reference. She told us how her life and world had been turned upside down. Her experience fits entirely with what others have told me of a living hell of unsellable property, unaffordable interim safety costs, insurance hikes and unknowable liabilities going forward—in short, what they thought was a safe and secure home being turned into a financial prison—and of the stress, ruined lives and total inequality of the exclusions from protection.

I joined Amanda’s mother and brother earlier today in a meeting with Minister Samantha Dixon. She gave the impression of listening very carefully to what we said. Mrs Walker’s recent email, which I paraphrase, says this: “My precious daughter was a very ardent campaigner on behalf of thousands of leaseholders who suffered because of loopholes in the Building Safety Act. This amendment”—she is referring to the amendment before us now—“will not help her but may help many others. The anxiety levels in so many people were painful to watch, and in my view ruined many lives”.

As the Minister knows, around 1.7 million leaseholders do not have full or even, in some cases, partial protection from the costs of remediating unsafe buildings. Those living in buildings below 11 metres have no protection at all, as the noble Baroness pointed out. Enfranchised leaseholders and those owning more than three properties are liable for any non-cladding remediation costs. Other leaseholders may have to contribute up to £15,000 to cover non-cladding costs—depending on the wealth of their freeholder, if you please. All these people are completely innocent of the causes that led to defects in their building, not just cladding but basic disregard of the building regulations in force at the time of construction.

The assumption is that lower rise buildings are safe because it is easier to mitigate risks, to escape from them and for fire and rescue services to attend to emergencies, but we do not actually know that they are safe. The proportionate standard under PAS 9980, which is the remediation standard frequently used, admits that spread of fire may be more rapid given the greater prevalence of combustible materials in the construction, and the capacity of many construction products to generate impenetrable choking smoke when burning, impeding escape. And who pays for any mitigation? Ultimately, it is the leaseholders.

According to the National Fire Chiefs Council, the current Building Safety Act’s three-tier approach—fully protected, partial or capped protection, and totally unprotected— is delaying remediation and leaving leaseholders in limbo. That funding is fragmented, and occupiers are left in unsafe buildings or are among the growing number, currently totalling more than 14,000, of those mandatorily evacuated, sometimes having to leave very modern buildings. The National Audit Office has found that the PAS 9980 risk-based approach to remediation is a cause of delays as different stakeholders argue over what constitutes “proportionate” remediation and “tolerable” risk, both of which terms appear in that document. Some 52 flat developers have signed up to the responsible actors scheme. Their remediation responsibility is to this proportionate standard only—never mind failure to build to the relevant building standards applicable at the time of construction.

Markets need transparency, and the Government need to be upfront about the general quality of buildings and building regulation compliance over past 30 years. It has long been an offence not to comply with building regulations. Market sentiment depends on clarity, but beyond the scope of the Government’s remediation portfolio, it is unclear what the reality actually is. So long as this doubt sloshes around the market, the insurance and lending sectors and, indeed, purchaser keenness, will remain febrile. All these may predispose a wider malaise the longer this persists, particularly in the lending markets, where the impact of new solvency regulations means that such uncertainties will have to be factored into securitisation risks, loan book management and consumer costs.

For evidence of the effects today, I point to flagging new flat construction, rising costs, schemes being mothballed and softening sales markets. Wagging fingers at insurers will not get rid of risk awareness and sentiment. Once you understand that something is a risk, it is there for ever. While I understand why the Government might not want to garner a lot of non-compliance data, if, despite consumers’ and the markets’ need to know, they choose not to do so, what I set out is the inevitable outcome, with implications for urban redevelopment and densification, homebuilding targets and, ultimately, stable communities.

This amendment would sweep up all building types, all tenures, and both cladding and non-cladding defects. It would tighten standards and encompass product manufacturers. Any planning delays under the amendment would be no more than the minimum necessary to process regulations immediately on Royal Assent, and I believe very few projects would be held up in practice. If the Government agree the principle that innocent people should not foot the bill for bad building practices or even for preserving the Government’s own policy objectives, they need at least to indicate to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that they propose to take this forward with serious intent. This amendment would give the Secretary of State the tools to do this and to end the two-tier remediation standard, the basic inequity and uncertainty of the current protections, and the market disruption that has accompanied them.