Social Housing and Building Safety

Felicity Buchan Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

Tuesday is the five-year anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy and I start by paying tribute to my constituents—the 72 men, women and children who lost their lives in such appalling circumstances. I also pay tribute to the bereaved, the survivors, the residents and the broader community in north Kensington and Kensington, who have borne so much with so much dignity. I welcome the families and residents to the Gallery; it is an honour to have them here.

We need a lasting legacy to come out of the Grenfell fire tragedy, which must be that everyone has a right to be safe in their homes, that all residents’ and tenants’ voices need to be heard, and that communities need to be involved in decision making when it comes to their communities. In the two and a half years since I was elected, I have said in this Chamber on a number of occasions that I have been frustrated by the length of time it has taken for some of the changes to building, fire safety and cladding remediation to be implemented. I say again that it is incumbent on all of us to have a sense of urgency when we go about this task.

I am glad to say that we have made substantial progress in the last few months. In April, we enacted the Building Safety Act 2022, which is a landmark piece of legislation. As part of that Act, we extended to intermediate buildings the statutory protection for leaseholders such that they will not have to pay for cladding remediation, which I welcome. I also welcome the establishment of a regulator for construction products. I have been shocked and horrified by some of the revelations that have come out of the Grenfell inquiry about the building products sector, so I am glad that that regulator has been put in place.

I thank the Secretary of State for his efforts with building developers and owners. It is good that 45 of the largest building developers have signed up to the new regime to provide at least £2 billion of funding for buildings in whose development they were involved. It is also positive that we now have the building safety levy, which will raise £3 billion-plus for buildings that have been orphaned. That is all good progress.

My constituents and I were pleased to see the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill in the Queen’s Speech, for which activists in my constituency have been calling for a long time. It is very important that social housing tenants’ voices are heard and respected, and that the regulator is given tougher enforcement powers. I am glad that there can be unlimited fines and that, for the big social housing providers, there will be regular inspections along the lines of Ofsted inspections.

We are making progress, but there is more to be done. In my constituency, there are buildings where the remediation is still in progress. We need a sense of urgency in addressing every single building in the country that has fire safety defects. Every building needs to be properly assessed. It is important that we are proportionate in that fire risk assessment—it needs to be accurate and to reflect the real risks—but once we have it, we need to get on with the job of remediating the defects. I understand that, in London, approximately 1,100 buildings would require simultaneous evacuation, and we need to get on with the job of remediating them.

It is also important to address the broader picture—not only the remediation, but the other attendant issues. I talked to a constituent this morning who lives in a building that does not require remediation, but the insurance companies believe there is sufficient risk for them to have put up the insurance premiums multiple times. That broader context needs to be looked at. We need to ensure that the recommendations of the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry are implemented. I understand that 21 of the 46 have been, but we need to ensure that the rest are implemented urgently.

We have made substantial progress, particularly in the last few months, but there is a lot more to be done. This needs to be a collective endeavour on both sides of the House, because we owe it to the Grenfell families and the Grenfell community that such a tragedy never be allowed to happen again. We as the legislators need to ensure that.