Fire Safety and Cladding

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before I call Mr Reed to open our debate on this important matter, you can all see that there is a cast of thousands. This is a very important subject. When Mr Reed has sat down, I will let you know exactly what the time limits will be. You should plan for three or four minutes, and we will see how we go.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered cladding and remedial fire safety work.

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Streeter. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I am grateful so many colleagues have turned up to the debate, which emphasises how significant this issue is for so many of our constituents.

I first came to the issue because of a block called Citiscape in my constituency. A group of residents came to see me because the block has the same kind of cladding on it as Grenfell Tower: aluminium composite material—ACM—cladding with a polyethylene core. Polyethylene is a kind of compressed paraffin. At Grenfell, this cladding had the equivalent combustibility to 32,000 litres of petrol over the outside of the building, so it is understandable that Citiscape’s residents were so concerned.

The residents were told that it would cost them as leaseholders up to £31,000 per flat to remove the cladding—a bill many of them simply could not afford—and that if everybody did not pay, none of the work would start. One older resident had to cancel his move to a care home because the flat he was going to sell to pay for that move was unsellable because of the cladding on the building. These people are stuck in a building that they describe as a deathtrap, unable to move and unable to afford the cost of making their homes safe.

The industry estimates that some 800 blocks across the country have flammable cladding: 300 are council-owned and will eventually be made safe, although it is worrying that nine months after Grenfell only three have so far been completely re-clad, and around 500 blocks are privately owned, but the Government are doing nothing to help the people living in them.

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[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Mr Reed. Colleagues can do the maths for themselves. I am going to impose a voluntary time limit of three minutes to start, but let us see how we get on.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on securing this debate. I would also like to show my appreciation of all the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) has done since this terrible, terrible fire, which brings us here this afternoon.

The fire was a moment when I think that most of us across the House thought there would be a cross-party response showing huge urgency. We should keep in mind the 72 people who lost their lives and also keep in mind two very real issues. The first is genuine fear. There is very likely no one in this Chamber this afternoon who lives in a council tower block estate or who is a leaseholder of a former council building that they have bought. So there will be no one really in the Chamber who can speak to that issue, other than perhaps those of us who have grown up in council homes.

The second issue is trust. The Secretary of State said on 3 July last year that the Government would take every precaution in relation to this cladding. The Government said also on 26 June that they would put in place support for councils that could not pay for remedial works. As has been discussed, indifference to the context is now such that we might be moving to a situation in which desktop studies are done. Let us not dress that up in fancy language. It means that someone can sit in their office and determine a building’s fire regulations without going out and getting into the detail. That is extraordinary, in light of the loss of life. None of us would have thought it possible that nine months later we would even be debating that possibility.

What has happened in relation to the dignity of those souls and lives lost? What has happened in relation to the successive reviews of and inquiries into fire regulations in this country? Why are we going to dismiss what came out of the Hackitt review? How do we breach that trust? How do we meet the fear of those who are in these buildings at this time? How do we keep it in our minds that we are talking about mothers on the 20th or 22nd floor who are worried about how they will get their children down and out of the building? We are talking about some councils that had a policy of putting old-age pensioners in those buildings. How do the Government live up to those expectations? That is what we wait to hear from the Minister.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I call Marsha De Cordova. Take your time. People have been so very good that we have an extra couple of minutes, which the hon. Lady may take if she wishes.

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[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

The Scottish National party spokesman has graciously given us a few extra minutes, for which I am grateful.

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[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on securing this timely debate and on his wider efforts to co-ordinate Members who are concerned that the Government should step up and do more. Two hundred and sixty-four days have now passed since we watched flames engulf the Grenfell tower block in north Kensington, yet on private freehold developments across the country hundreds of thousands of residents still live with the knowledge that their homes are covered in lethal material. New Capital Quay, a vast 980-home development in my constituency, is only one of hundreds of such cases, although it is perhaps the highest-profile.

Cladding on the site failed tests carried out by the Department in July last year, and eight months on that cladding and insulation remain in place with no timescale for their removal and replacement, and with an inadequate and expensive waking watch fire safety patrol still in place. Residents are left in limbo while the freeholder, Galliard Homes, and the National House Building Council tussle over whether there was a breach of building regulations at the time of construction, and about who is liable—this tussle might be settled out of court, but it might ultimately be resolved only through lengthy litigation.

Residents stuck in the middle of that messy squabble are terrified at the thought that their families are not safe, and leaseholders are anxious that they will be hit by the full costs of the work. At a public meeting last week, one elderly resident told me that she is resigned to the fact that she will not make it out of the building if there is a fire, even with the waking watch in place.

What has been the Government’s position throughout? It has amounted to little more than a muffled and infrequent plea to the private companies involved not to pass on costs to leaseholders. No attempt has been made to ensure that the dangerous cladding is removed as a matter of urgency. In many ways, however, that is no surprise because the Government are deeply compromised on fire safety. In 2013, they failed to act on recommendations made after the 2009 Lakanal House disaster, and they chose not to rewrite procedural guidance set out in Approved Document B. They did nothing to prevent the installation of combustible polyethylene ACM cladding of the type found on New Capital Quay.

Presumably on the basis of advice from the BRE Group, in 2006 the Government opened the door to combustible insulation material such as the K15 Kingspan insulation found on New Capital Quay. That was approved as compliant through testing, when previously it had been impossible to meet the guidance by that route.

The Building Control Alliance determined to introduce a new route to compliance through desktop studies, but as the market became increasingly competitive its members began to approve cladding without even the need for such a desktop study. It is hard to believe that the Government were not aware that that was taking place, yet they failed to amend Approved Document B to respond to it.

If one steps back from all the legal wrangling between private companies about cladding and insulation on private freehold developments, one notes the flawed nature of the building regulations regime, the inadequacy of procedural guidance within that regime, and the passive response of Government to the behaviour of the combustibles industry since 2014. That explains why dangerous, combustible cladding and insulation of the kind that surrounds the homes of my constituents were signed off as compliant.

Let me be clear: the fault does not lie only with Conservative Governments since 2010, because successive Governments have failed to ensure that the building regulation regime was fit for purpose. However, the Government have a duty to act—if not a legal duty, then certainly a moral one—and they can do so speedily in a way that will make a big difference to my constituents by issuing clear, prescriptive advice about the final date by which dangerous combustible cladding must be removed from developments such as New Capital Quay. That is the least my constituents, and others across the country in a similar situation, deserve.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank all hon. Members for collaborating on timing.