Ian Byrne
Main Page: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool, West Derby)Building Safety Bill (Second sitting)
Ian Byrne Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
Q
Dr Steedman: This Bill gives us the architecture, ultimately—it will take time—to change and improve the culture of the construction industry. The construction industry in the UK dates from around the Napoleonic times: the structures, the people, and the professions that work in the industry date from hundreds of years ago. I do not want to comment on the history or any assertions about the culture, but I am very confident that the structure of this Bill—the way it is laid out, with the supporting statutory guidance—will effect change. However, in the end, it has to be the industry that makes the change, and the industry needs to lead that process. It is no good simply writing it all in a Bill and expecting some magic wand to make it happen. In the end, the industry has to step up.
Ian Byrne
Q
Dr Steedman: The outcome of the regulation, including the vast scope of industry standards, will together deliver the culture change, but regulation alone cannot deliver culture change, because you cannot regulate everything. In the end, you have to have a combination of carrot and stick that encourages people to realise that in order for companies and industries to become more successful and have more satisfied clients, they need to behave better, and they need to recognise the importance of safety in their work and the impact of their work on others.
A lot of the work that we have done on the competence standards development—the framework of new competence standards, the PAS standards that Peter referred to earlier for principal designer, principal contractor and building safety manager, and possibly for building control—is about recognising the importance of your work impacting others. Lots of people can do their work, but you can still have an unsafe situation. People need to realise that the impact of your work on others is where a lot of the big risk comes from, so that requires people to think wider than their own profession. This Bill will help us get there.
The Chair
I can feel Peter listening patiently online. Would you like to add to those comments?
Peter Caplehorn: Chair, I am grateful. I was absolutely going along with what Scott was saying. I would just like to add something, though. If I can take everybody back to the John Prescott summit in 2001 on health and safety in construction, he made the very clear point that the industry needed to change. That was primarily driven by the industry understanding the message and getting on with it. Of course, regulation came along later in the shape of the early Construction (Design And Management) Regulations, but it was very much about the industry understanding the message and dealing with it. Again, I come back to what Scott has just said. This Bill sets out a very good framework and it marks a point of confidence that everybody should be marching in the same direction, but it will require the industry to do a lot of the heavy lifting as well.
I would like to highlight two points that I think have yet to be addressed and are fundamental in our steps to make sure that we get rid of the industry that we have had up until recent times. One is a reform of procurement processes, and the other is a change to the standard contracts that are used to procure buildings across the industry. Dame Judith Hackitt, in her report, identified both as seeding some of the bad behaviours that we have seen, and I think both are in need of work. In fact, that work has started, but it is outside the regulatory framework.
Dr Steedman: Just to close on that remark about procurement, I would warmly support it. We have not really grappled with procurement as a tool and yet we have standards that go back to 2011 on construction procurement policies, so the issue of procurement and how it is done is a very strong lever to drive behaviours in the right direction.
The Chair
I will bring in David, who indicated that he would like to make a contribution.
Councillor Renard: The Local Government Association has similar views. We are extremely concerned about the impact that this could have on leaseholders, so we very much take the view that the Government should pay the up-front remediation costs and seek to claim back as much as possible from those directly responsible. The failure to protect leaseholders will leave councils to pick up the pieces if householders subsequently become homeless, and then the responsibility falls on to local councils to fund rehoming them.
We also take the view that any remediation that applies to social housing providers should also apply to local authority tenants; otherwise, money may be diverted away from repairs and maintenance and towards other costs, and that would just store up a problem for the future.
Victoria Moffett: The funding is obviously a really important point. The Government funding means that all the barriers to remediation can be overcome from a financial perspective. In support of that, you also need Government to co-ordinate the limited resources to carry out remediation works and prioritise the buildings that present the greatest risk. That is the best way to address risk across the board overall. We are not seeing that happening, and that is very much part of the same argument.
Ian Byrne
Q
The Chair
Who would like to tackle that one?
Victoria Moffett: As far as I am aware, there is not anything in this Bill specifically about people with disabilities. The Fire Safety Act 2021, in making changes to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, is the place where that would be appropriate from a legislative perspective. You probably know that the Government have recently consulted on a requirement for a personal emergency evacuation plan for anybody who might need one. Without a doubt it is key that people who have disabilities or mobility issues feel safe in their property.
We made the point in the consultation that we want a discussion about the questions that would arise if that were made a requirement. There might be questions specifically about a person’s plan. For example, I think the Government talked about times when it could be appropriate for somebody to gain support from friends or family, and that might be right, but not in all cases. Those are the questions we need to find an answer to, but the premise of ensuring that people with disabilities or mobility issues are safe in their homes is absolutely non-negotiable.
Shaun Bailey
Q
Liam Spender: Thank you for that excellent question. There are three critical things to address. First, there need to be leaseholder resident representatives on the rule-making bodies. This avoids a situation where industry and Government make rules that suit them, and pass the bill on to leaseholders who are left with the inadequate tool of challenges to the building safety charge and service charge, to contest bills that have already been paid. Secondly, the Government are trying to perform some sort of Frankenstein operation, with the Building Safety Bill, on a system that has had its day—namely, leasehold. There is a fundamental imbalance of power in the leasehold system in favour of landlords. Until you address that, you will not solve the problem of rules being made to suit landlords and bills being passed on to residents with no oversight, and no control. Thirdly, Dame Judith Hackitt identified in her report the culture of box ticking in the industry, the race to the bottom and value engineering—all that sort of stuff. Until that changes, nothing changes; buildings will continue to be built that are not fit for occupation and we will end up repeating the cycle at some point in the future. Those are the three things that need to be changed. I think that the McPartland-Smith amendments go a long way towards changing them, by introducing clear, legal routes to recovery against builders if they do not do their jobs properly.
Giles Grover: I will just echo the comments on the fact that the whole leaseholder structure means that you are still at the bottom of the food chain. There is all this talk about the building safety charge, but, as Liam said, ultimately it is about leasehold law—despite the Government thinking there might be protections in landlord and tenant law, we have seen that there are not the supposed protections there should be, because all the cases are based on the terms of the lease, which are always written against us. There needs to be an overarching look at the fact that it is not just the building safety charge, it is about service charges and how they are levied. There needs to be a bit more control over that, so that there is the actual ability to challenge it, rather than saying, “You can potentially go to the tribunal.” Ultimately, the cases we have seen do that just end up being rebuffed.
I am still concerned about the insurance issues we are facing now. There does not seem to be enough control. We have seen buildings insurance soaring by hundreds of per cent. I am not sure what protections there are against that happening. We have tried to report it to the FCA and the CMA, but are simply told that the responses are not as constructive or helpful as they could be.
Everything needs to be looked at again—even the building safety charge itself. When it was first drafted, I remember a meeting with one of the deputy directors of MHCLG where they said they did not really know much it was going to be. It was an academic exercise. Even the numbers in the current impact assessment say it will be £16 a month. It might be £42 or £26 a month. For existing buildings it should be more. No one really knows. As some industry figures have started to look at it, it might well be hundreds of pounds a month. There needs to be an overarching, holistic look at service charges and building safety charges. That would be the first thing.
To go back to Liam’s point about the McPartland-Smith amendment, that is what we are hoping the Conservatives will look at and realise that, yes, residents must be protected now, because they are the innocent people.
Ian Byrne
Q
Giles Grover: Thank you for the question, Ian. Resident engagement is key. As we saw last night—those of you who watched “Grenfell: The Untold Story”—if there had been sufficient resident engagement in 2015 and 2016, would the events of June 2017 have happened? I do not think they would have. It is important to have resident engagement, but, as we have seen, as lot of these things are very much tick-box exercises. Recently—or not so recently—the National Fire Chiefs’ Council updated its guidance on simultaneous evacuation and interim measures such as waking watch to say that residents should be consulted and cost-benefit options should be explored. That never happens in practice.
What is there actually to make it happen? The Government do not want to legislate for a resident group in each building. I can understand the reasons for that, but what is to stop the responsible person, the council entities, from just saying, “We have tried to engage residents. We put a few flyers up and gave a form out.” There needs to be a more positive obligation on them to actually engage residents than there seems to be now.
Liam Spender: I wholeheartedly endorse all of that. The answer to Ian’s question is that the residents engagement strategy in the Bill is not up to scratch. The problem is that the rules are being made now by statutory instruments in close consultation with industry. There is no amount of resident engagement strategy or vision that can overcome that issue. Once the regulations are made, there will be limited room for manoeuvre. I think there needs to be resident representation on the rule-making bodies to ensure we actually have a genuine residents’ voice, rather than a couple of cul-de-sacs that freeholders, managing agents, responsible persons—whatever title they are being given in the Bill—can lead residents down without there being any meaningful input.
The Chair
So just a small question to start with.
Giles Peaker: The immediate impact on building practices is not clear. One would hope that, under the new regime, buildings might become, and be kept, safer. The immediate impact on building premises that we know have not been great is hard to see. Frankly, without stronger liability for the building sector, that is unlikely to change.