Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Jack Abbott Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the intent she has shown in the Bill that is before us. It is a privilege to be sat next to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell)—I know that his mission in this place is to fight for justice for so many of his constituents who have been left alone for so long.

Across the country, far too many lives have been ruined by the building safety crisis. In Ipswich, we have hundreds of residents who have endured years of fear, uncertainty and immense financial hardship. These are people who did everything right—worked hard, saved for a deposit and bought somewhere to call home—only to discover that their home was unsafe. Since the day of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, in which 72 people lost their lives—each entirely avoidable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater said—leaseholders across the country have been left in limbo. What should have been a catalyst for change instead became a straitjacket for so many people who do not know whether they are safe, whether they will lose their home, or whether they will be forced to pay tens of thousands of pounds to put right failures they did nothing to cause.

I have spoken to plenty of residents in my constituency of Ipswich about their experiences. Their stories—like, I am sure, so many we will hear this afternoon—are devastating. They cannot sell their home, cannot move, and cannot move on with their lives. Their entire financial future is at stake, but so too is their mental health and peace of mind. Some have considered bankruptcy just to get out; others have thought about handing back the keys and simply walking away. It is heartbreaking that anyone should reach that point through no fault of their own.

I want to highlight a few of the buildings that we in Ipswich have been facing issues with for many years, beginning with St Francis Tower. Remediation work on that building started in 2018, and residents spent years living under shrink wrap as it dragged on. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing visited St Francis Tower in a previous life, when I was a candidate and he was a shadow Minister, and we could not see natural daylight through the shrink wrap. Even when that was replaced, the work dragged on and on, and in July 2023, flooding forced those poor people from their homes after years of misery. Years of disruption were followed by the trauma of evacuation.

My team and I worked with residents and the Government to secure funding for repairs in November 2024. That was an important step forward that replaced the outer cladding, but the internals are still damaged, and three years on, people have not yet been able to return to their homes. Although I am hopeful that there will be good news in the coming weeks, even if remediation work is able to start in the weeks before Christmas, it is unlikely that those people will be able to return to their homes until spring 2028—a decade after work on the building first started. Residents should never have been put in that position. Nobody should have to fight for something as basic as a safe home, but these people cannot even live in their homes.

At Churchmans House, investigations revealed problems extending beyond external cladding—missing fire barriers and inadequate protection around structural steelwork. Leaseholders faced demands for eye-watering payments and the threat that they might have to leave their homes. The original developer was insolvent and people who had done nothing wrong were left facing the consequences, a story that we hear over and over again. The good news is that our Government confirmed funding for the necessary works to make the building safe, but not before months and years of worry. Unfortunately, residents of Cardinal Lofts were not so lucky. I cannot believe that such a building was ever deemed fit for habitation; if a fire broke out there, it would have ripped through the entire building because of a lack of compartmentalisation. People unknowingly slept in their beds every night—some for decades—without knowing how deeply unsafe their building was and how much of a threat to their lives it posed. No one ever never returned to Cardinal Lofts. The building is not fit for use.

These are different buildings with different owners, but the same injustice is shared by so many people, in Ipswich and across the country, and I could name many other buildings in our town that have been subjects of the same stories. People bought those homes in good faith, but were sold something faulty, and they should never have been left with the costs of putting things right. That is why the Bill is so important. For the first time, those responsible will face a clear legal duty to identify and remediate unsafe cladding in residential buildings. Building owners and others with repairing responsibilities must act. That means an end to indefinite delays as residents live with fear and financial uncertainty, trapped in unsafe buildings. Crucially, those who ignore their responsibilities may face substantial financial penalties, criminal prosecution and further enforcement action. Responsibilities can be enforced, and there will be consequences for those who ignore them.

The remediation backstop is particularly important: when building owners fail to act, Homes England and local authorities will be able to step in, arrange repairs, and recover costs from those responsible. That matters enormously to people trapped in the middle of endless arguments over who should do the work. I also welcome measures to secure contributions from manufacturers whose unsafe construction products contributed to this crisis.

We were elected to accelerate remediation and protect leaseholders better, and the Bill is an important step forward in the delivery of that promise. It builds on the remediation acceleration plan, which is already helping thousands of people across the country to live in safer homes. Alongside it are the plans announced by the Government to extend leaseholder protections and support necessary fire safety works in eligible buildings owned collectively by residents.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Ipswich Cladiators, and the many, many residents of our town who have campaigned so tirelessly for change—not just for themselves but for their neighbours, their communities and people across the country. They should never have had to fight so hard, and we cannot give them back the years that they have all lost, but we can maintain a relentless focus on making their homes safe, protecting them from unfair costs, and helping them to move forward. That is what they deserve, and that, with this Bill, is what the Government are doing.