Building Safety and Resilience

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention on this really important agenda. I will say more about the remediation action plan and our response. The Prime Minister committed to making sure that we respond to the recommendations of phase 2 within six months, and we will certainly be looking at those recommendations. The point she makes, which is very important, has been raised with me over the past few months. I am also familiar with those concerns as I raised them myself when we were in opposition.

I turn to enforcement action. Our message to building owners is clear: those who fail to make their buildings safe will face enforcement action. The funding is there: the Government have committed £5.1 billion to remove dangerous cladding, and industry is providing the rest. All blocks of residential flats above 11 metres now have access to a scheme to fix unsafe cladding. Qualifying leaseholders are protected by law from crippling bills for historical safety defects.

As the Prime Minister made clear in his speech in the House last week, we will take the necessary steps to speed this up. We are willing to force freeholders to assess their buildings and enter remediation schemes within set timetables, with a legal requirement to force action if that is what it takes to tackle industry intransigence. As I mentioned, we will set out further steps on remediation this autumn.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I welcome my hon. Friend to her new position; I know that she will be a firm advocate for those thousands of people who are still waiting for remediation to be done on their buildings. While we need to have partnerships with the big housing builders to meet our target of 1.5 million, some of those same developers are still dragging their feet on doing the remediation on homes. Will she assure residents in my constituency and across the country that part of the deal those developers may be doing with other parts of her Department will be about taking seriously their remediation responsibilities for those buildings?

[Rushanara Ali]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that important point. A number of developers have already signed agreements on the remediation agenda. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the whole Government have made the clear commitment to building the 1.5 million homes. These are two sides of the same coin. We have to make sure that buildings that are not safe are made safe, and that the future homes that we build are safe and secure and address the needs of our country. She made important points, and we are very much on the same page.

There is no excuse for a building owner not to enter a cladding scheme that they are eligible for. Any owners who fail to do so will be held to account. We will not sit by while they fail to act. As well as acting now to keep people safe, we are learning the lessons from Grenfell for the long term. We are investing in and supporting local resilience to deliver strong planning, response and recovery. The Department has provided £22.5 million in core capacity and capability funding to local resilience forums since 2021. These are fundamental to our national resilience, and the Department will continue to consider every opportunity for further strengthening them, including by supporting the Cabinet Office to shape and develop the programme of engagement with local stakeholders through the resilience review.

We will ensure robust oversight, strong regulatory frameworks and an unwavering commitment to accountability at every level. That means reforming the construction products industry that made this fatal cladding. Those who compromise that safety will face the consequences. That means taking steps to make the necessary improvements. My written statement last week focused on improving the fire safety and evacuation of disabled and vulnerable residents in high-rise residential buildings in England. In our first weeks in office, we have resolved an important recommendation from the Grenfell inquiry’s first report—five long years after it was published.

The Home Office will bring forward proposals this autumn for residential personal emergency evacuation plans—residential PEEPs, as they are known. Residents with disabilities and impairments whose ability to evacuate could be compromised will be entitled to a person-centred risk assessment. This will identify appropriate equipment and adjustments, supporting their fire safety or evacuation, as well as a residential PEEP statement that records what they should do in the event of a fire. We are getting that important work going by funding social housing providers to deliver residential PEEPs for their renters. The Government will engage with representative groups as these plans are developed. The Home Office plans to lay regulations as soon as possible, with a view to the proposals coming into force in 2025-26.

In addition, we have made progress on delivering sounders—evacuation alert systems for new buildings—to reduce the likelihood and impact of future fires, as recommended in phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry report. We will consider recommendations from phase 2 regarding construction products shortly, as I mentioned. As the House is aware, we have also announced the withdrawal of the outdated national classes for fire testing standards in favour of the more robust European standards, and we will update approved document B to make provision for sprinklers in new care homes. Last week, we also announced a further £2 million in grant funding to reopen the waking watch replacement fund, and to support more residents in buildings with fire safety defects to put in place common alarm systems. to help them keep residents safe.

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[David Simmonds]

Of course, it is embarrassing to hear that. Again, from experience of local government, I know that a great deal of work has been put in to ensure that modern methods of construction are put forward for Government consideration. Often there are exemplars around the country of how new estates and new homes have been delivered. There is certainly no lack of evidence on the opportunities available.

We also have an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges in our current housing stock, and in other types of buildings such as schools and hospitals. Once upon a time, aerated concrete and asbestos were regarded as wonder materials, and house builders and Governments would have been considered inefficient if they had not ensured their use. We now know that they have created problems and risks that require significant levels of expenditure to remediate.

That brings me to another important point: building resilience is not just about homes. The BBC recently did an excellent piece of work commemorating the original Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which was implemented by Government following a number of quite appalling incidents, mainly in factories, where significant loss of life occurred because the design of buildings meant that, in the event of a fire, for example, it was difficult or impossible for people to get away.

We know that school buildings have been destroyed and that thus far not a single school has been fitted with sprinklers where fire has resulted in total loss of the building. The cost of installing that equipment at the design and construction stage is relatively modest compared with the impact of retrofitting it, so there is an opportunity for the Government to reflect on how, as we take forward their strategy on investment in new schools, we ensure that that resilience is, as far as possible, built in and that the full cost to the taxpayer that occurs when a hospital or a school is lost is considered. We must reflect also on how we ensure that office buildings and factories under construction meet the highest possible standards, especially as they often face many of the same challenges around new materials and new forms of design that are intended to make them more efficient but potentially bring in risks that it is our duty to foresee and prevent as far as we possibly can.

We will shortly consider the Renters’ Rights Bill. That will have a wider impact, especially on the build-to-rent sector. We have seen new forms of developer coming into the market with the specific intention of constructing, from the outset, long-term rental homes.

[Emily Darlington]

I welcome the shadow Minister’s comments about working cross-party. One thing we need to do is establish the facts, the reality of what is going on, and the confusion left by the previous Government. People are being told by mortgage providers that they need an EWS1 form, but by freeholders that they do not. They are stuck, going back and forth for years. Would he like to take this opportunity to recognise the confusing legacy left by his Government and apologise to all the thousands of people who are stuck in places feeling that they have no place to go?

[David Simmonds]

Given the broad cross-party consensus in the last Parliament about the importance of the new forms of legislation and the regulation that follows from it, I think we should seek to maintain that consensus as far as possible, but as somebody who in a previous life worked in banking and as a mortgage adviser, I know that the challenges around the mortgageability of properties, especially properties of novel construction, go back many decades. For instance, a very limited number of lenders will provide for properties located above shops, because of that particular sets of risks. EWS1 was a similar example; despite apparent clarity from Government, there clearly was a lot of debate within the sector and some lenders preferred to go belt and braces, demanding the provision of something that was not required by law or regulation before making a lending decision—and the then Government did significant work in the previous Parliament to bring clarity and address those problems.

That is a helpful introduction to a point that I want to touch on briefly: the role of the insurance industry, both in the challenges that will follow from Grenfell and in the wider experience of our constituents. Many people find themselves significantly challenged because, owing to a lack of clarity or to uncertainty about the construction of their building, they face significant insurance costs, sometimes to the point where only one insurance provider is available. Others face very significantly increased costs because of the behaviour of a landlord who seeks to apportion the insurance costs across all the properties in their portfolio, rather than according to the risks of a specific property that a particular tenant or leaseholder inhabits. It would be helpful for the Government to give some consideration to how they can work with the insurance industry to ensure that those who are paying for insurance are paying a fair price and that it provides the necessary cover that mortgage lenders, for example, will expect.

It is clear that, as well as the strong commitment we on the Opposition Benches can give to support the Government and the Minister in taking forward the regulations and ensuring that they address the concerns that have been expressed, we must also make the most of an opportunity to consider wider issues of building safety. In London, for example, there are significant numbers of Bison blocks, constructed with pre-stressed concrete—at the time, it was considered a wonder material and a means of delivering significant numbers of new homes efficiently and at a low cost—which have particular structural risks around them that local authorities across the capital and the wider country have had to address. We have also heard a little bit about the role of the fire service in carrying out inspections and prosecutions where properties are found not to meet the fire regulations.

All those points are indicators of risk across the system, and there is an opportunity for Government to ensure that Ministers have a clear line of sight so that such indicators can be effectively addressed. If there is a role for we politicians to play in local government and here in Westminster, it is to ensure that all these other people are doing their job. I promise that the Opposition will support the Government as they seek to achieve that, and I hope that together we will be able to take this work forward effectively, so that all our constituents can sleep safely in their beds.

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[Mr Betts]

Yes, I do. The Committee has made many recommendations in many reports about the whole issue of local authority funding and the squeezing of resources in respect of services of this kind, given the priority that authorities have to give to social care in all its forms and, now, temporary accommodation. As well as the question of resources, however, there is the question of independence. The building control officer will be beholden to the developer, whoever the developer is, because the developer will say, “If you give me a difficult time on this building, I will not give you any work for the next one.” That must be stopped. The last Government would say that they did so in respect of the highest-rise buildings, but it needs to be stopped for all buildings, and I am pleased about what Sir Martin said about that in his report.

Let me now return to the issue of social housing. I am sorry, but I must tell the Minister that I am not going to let it go away. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister made comments about the discrimination against and bad treatment of social housing tenants. For a long time we have had the attitude that this is poor housing for poor people who do not really matter. We must challenge that, because they do matter. Landlords in the social housing sector, housing associations and councils, will always do their best to make buildings safe, and in some cases—because there is no access to the building safety fund unless they can show that they cannot do the work, and they can always find some money to do it—that will mean squeezing the headroom in the housing revenue account or housing associations’ business plans. That squeezed headroom would otherwise be available for the building of new homes.

If the Government want to build 1.5 million new homes—and I fully support that; I think it is one of the best commitments that they are making—they will not be built by the private sector alone. A substantial number of social houses will have to be built, and that requires HRA resources and resources in the housing associations’ business plans. The more we squeeze them with other responsibilities that are not financed by the building safety fund, the less money will be available to build new social housing.

[Emily Darlington]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point about the impact on the HRA. We had two such buildings where the council had to deal with compartmentation with no support from the Government, and had to rehouse 300 families in just under a year, per best practice. Does my hon. Friend agree that the pressure on councils has been much greater than it has been on private developers to move quickly on remediation and removal?

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[Emily Darlington]

On strong political leadership, will the Minister join me in congratulating those councils that, as soon as the new building regulations came out, took immediate action to put in a waking watch? I am talking about the wider regulations—not just the ones about cladding, but the ones about compartmentalisation. In Milton Keynes, within a year, we had emptied two tower blocks that had compartmentalisation, rehoused more than 300 families, and then demolished the towers, whereas Milton Keynes families in private developments with similar issues are still waiting for remediation work to be done. We often hear that councils are slower than the private sector, but does the Minister agree that councils have responded more quickly and more responsibly than the private sector to these issues?

[Alex Norris]

My hon. Friend is too humble to point to her role in Milton Keynes, but the political will exercised on that and many other housing issues has got results. The Government will display the same degree of political will, and we need to see it in local government, too. Milton Keynes sets a really good example.

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[Emily Darlington]

We have been talking quite passionately in this debate, but we often lose sight of the stories of those who were actually affected. I think not least of a woman—she shall remain anonymous—who bought her flat as a way to ensure that she and her husband would be debt-free in their retirement. Unfortunately, her husband has passed away. Although they planned to be able to pay for the insurance and the service charge, those costs have gone up by 600%. She, an elderly lady in her retirement, is now accruing debt that she never wanted to pass on to her family. That is an issue not of cladding, but of wider things. For her, the mess that has been left, and the lack of clarity around remediation, means that her daily life is now a stressful situation. Does the Minister agree that the Secretary of State in the previous Government, who is responsible for this mess and misery, has no place leading any political party in this country?

[Alex Norris]

Everyone will have been angered by what we saw in the report. All those who played a part and made decisions will rightly reflect on their role and responsibilities in this, and will, I assume, make appropriate judgments in respect of the scale of the issue. My hon. Friend talks about service charges, so I will turn next to that point.