Building Safety Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Ian Byrne and Daisy Cooper

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ian Byrne]

Q Your evidence, and the level of expertise that you have, has been astounding. I am glad that you mentioned the mental health aspect of it as well, because during covid we cannot imagine how it must have been. We took evidence on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and what we have heard about what people have been through has been heart-rending, obviously with the pandemic on top of what has been going on.

I want to touch on residents’ engagement. It is hugely important. We saw that with Grenfell, and what was missing. Earlier witnesses said that the residents’ engagement section of the Bill is potentially one of the weakest parts. How do we strengthen residents’ voices, and the imbalance of power that exists? How would you reflect what residents need within the Bill to ensure that their voices are heard?

Steve Day: We need to have very good transparency from our managing agents. Often we cannot see the reports that are about the safety of where we live. We cannot see the accounts to see that they are spending the money correctly. We are given a very high-level aggregate view that often does not check out to what we are paying, so that side of things needs to be transparent. There needs to be a lot of thought towards how residents are engaged as well. Not all residents have the inclination to get together and form a committee. How do you handle that? Do the managing agents pick on one person and say, “You’re responsible for it”? I think that could all be strengthened.

Alison Hills: Luckily, in our block, our managing agent has been very forthcoming. We have regular meetings with them every two weeks. That position is quite lucky, but it took a lot of work to get to that point. A lot of leaseholders across the country have managing agents who do not share information, fire risk assessments and even evacuation plans. We have seen, particularly for disabled leaseholders, that some blocks do not have any evacuation plans at all. I think that is completely unacceptable.

Information sharing is the key point. Residents do have a right to see this information. It affects their lives; it affects their health and safety; and it affects their mental health. They need to know what to do in the event of a fire; they need to know what the defects are; and they need to know what the next steps are. As I said, my managing agents have been good with that, but many others have not.

[Daisy Cooper]

Q My question has been slightly anticipated by the last one. I was going to ask about the residents’ voice and some of the challenges that you face, and you have already touched on the fact that you have found it hard to get accounts, reports and evacuation plans. One proposal that was put to us earlier, by another witness, was a suggestion that residents should have the right to have their voice heard, in some shape or other, on every single site. Would you support that proposal, and if so, how would you envisage that happening?

Alison Hills: Yes, I think that would be very useful for residents. There are residents from all walks of life in all heights of building, and it is important that all their voices get heard. We are lucky: in our particular block, we have a very active residents committee; we are a very engaged set of leaseholders. But others might not understand about their building’s defects; they might not realise the whole situation that is affecting leaseholders. There are some, even in different blocks in my development, who do not realise the repercussions of the Building Safety Bill. I think this is just about information sharing and making sure that every block has a voice and every leaseholder has a chance to have their say. That is absolutely crucial.

Steve Day: One thing that would have helped me with my investigations was the BBA certificates. It is charging hundreds of pounds to get that, and it is often very difficult. I think we have a right as residents, if we have this massively large building, to know what the safety certificate says about our external wall system, so I say: let’s put it all online. The BBA, I am sure, can get its money in other ways. Also, if we are trusting the construction industry to keep to regulations, and if a development does get judicially reviewed with our redress scheme, I would say: let’s have Parliament put the information online, perhaps in a brief form—the judgment and the fact that that developer thinks that plastic fixings are fine on firebreaks. Let’s put it online, on a parliamentary website or some form of official site, so that a development has the ability to shame the developer, the construction or the cladding manufacturer if they choose to basically say that something unsafe is safe. I think we do need something like that.

Alison Hills: One of the positive aspects of the Bill is that there is a clause about mandatory keeping of records. That is absolutely crucial. It needs to be done—absolutely. Our developer cannot find the plans, for example, for our building. And that has happened across the board. There are so many leaseholders I have spoken to where they cannot contact the developers and they have just lost all the paperwork. How do you lose the building work paperwork? It just does not make any sense. But if there is a centralised system, it cannot get lost; it is all there, in black and white. And any leaseholder who wants to see it should have that right, because it does affect them. It is their home at the end of the day, and they need to know what the building safety issues are with their flats.

Building Safety Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Ian Byrne and Daisy Cooper

Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I am still a sitting councillor in Liverpool.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I am also a vice-president of the Local Government Association.