Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (First sitting)

James Asser Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start to hear from witnesses, do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill?

[James Asser (West Ham and Beckton) (Lab)]

As we have London Fire Brigade witnesses, I declare that my partner works for it, in fire safety.

[Sagal Abdi-Wali (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I declare that I am still a councillor in a local authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Florence Eshalomi]

I will let colleagues come in.

[James Asser]

Q Starting with a practical example, five tower blocks in my constituency—the deputy commissioner may be aware of the case—have been evacuated because of serious concerns about structural problems. A month in, we are surrounded by engineers, some people are still in the building, many are scattered and homeless, and businesses are unsure what they are doing.

We cannot answer what is actually wrong with the building, but everything stems from that in terms of whether we need to be clearing people out. In the first instance, everyone phoned the fire brigade, because they thought, “Hey, it’s not safe,” but it sits outside the fire brigade’s powers because it is not a fire issue; it is a structural one. In terms of your powers and where powers lie, where those responsible fail to take building safety seriously or to act when they should, what differences would clearer duties and stronger consequences make? Would additional powers in your remit be helpful in achieving that?

Dan Daly: As the previous panel talked about, the Bill provides a number of tools to a number of different regulators, and that is helpful and should be applauded. In terms of some of the unresolved questions and historical challenges that Lord Roe was talking about, the Bill will struggle to address some of the structural issues, and we will still find ourselves with the issue of who takes the lead in some circumstances. Because the issue falls back to one of public safety, fire and rescue services are often the agency that will stay around, even when we do not necessarily have an ability to affect the outcome, particularly when it comes to structural issues and issues of construction competence down the line. We will be there predominately to support residents and to try to protect their safety.

I am not sure whether it tackles the historical issues. They are some of the unresolved elements of competency throughout the system that we identified and were talking about three or even four years ago, when the Bill was first mooted. I am not sure whether it does enough to tackle those, but it does give some responsibility to regulators elsewhere, which does add value.

Spencer Sutcliff: The example in your constituency is somewhat symbolic of the wider building construction issues over the last few years. I have great sympathy for the impacted residents; it is a terrible situation for them. Dan Daly is correct that the London Fire Brigade has been drawn into this issue despite not having the powers, as it stands, to resolve it—although we naturally have responsibilities around emergency response and other contingency arrangements.

We welcome the Bill, and the work that we will be done to clarify the enforcing responsibilities of each responsible agency will be welcomed—we are a long way through that as it stands anyway, with various protocols and long-standing work and arrangements—but it will not necessarily resolve this particular issue, and I suspect that other unique challenges will show themselves over the years, like this one has more recently.

[The Chair]

Mr Asser, you want to repeat the declaration you made at the start of proceedings.

[James Asser]

Yes. I am sorry; I should have done that beforehand. My partner works for the London Fire Brigade in fire safety issues.

[Sarah Gibson]

Q I want to ask about the suitability of PAS 9980. One of our previous speakers, Ms Fisher, mentioned that PAS 9980 has relativity in it and includes the word “tolerable”. I am extremely concerned, and I want your views—sorry, I have slightly led you. I wonder whether you feel that PAS 9980 is the correct statutory methodology for the Bill, and whether you feel that leaseholders might be left unsafe, or feeling unsafe, and paying higher insurance premiums because of the word “tolerable”, which does not have a very definite definition and is such a relative term, as Ms Fisher mentioned. What alternatives might there be for a better definition of what “resolved” looks like?

Penny Pender: That is a really good question. It depends on what you want to be achieved through the Bill. From the point of view of controlling the risk of fire spread on external walls—that fire safety point of view—we are satisfied that the PAS does what it needs to do. Obviously, it does not deal with how the building should have been constructed to begin with or those wider issues, so if that is something that people are looking for it to resolve, they will remain frustrated. Even though we are happy that it would deal with those critical life-safety issues, you are right to highlight that some of the wider issues, such as insurance, would not be addressed through that means.

Spencer Sutcliff: We think that PAS 9980 is an appropriate assessment, and we would not want, necessarily, to bring in further methodologies that could confuse the arrangement or provide further inconsistencies. It goes back to the root cause, which the previous panel touched on a number of times: the competency of the assessor. When you are using an assessment that always has an element of subjectivity, you are entirely reliant on the competence of the assessor, and we have seen various examples of different assessors coming to different conclusions using that assessment. There is some ongoing concern.

We really welcome and would like to see more of the auditing arrangements for Homes England. Certainly in the initial stages, I would like to see Homes England audit those premises that have been deemed “tolerable” and not just look at the ones that are effectively failing the assessment, because there needs to be confidence that those assessments are done in a consistent manner. We are back, a little bit, to the root cause around who is doing the assessments in the first place.

Penny Pender: If I might build on that, as Spencer says, no matter what methodology you select, if the people using that methodology do not have the right competencies to begin with, you will come across those issues. For the time being, we need that methodology. It is what we have available to us, so changing it at this point might not be helpful. I am aware that the PAS has been updated recently to make it clear that you have to have regard to and think about the wider risks in the building, so it should ultimately lead to those risks being identified. It is just a challenge for people, when they do identify them, how to address them.

Spencer Sutcliff: There is extensive work ongoing around the regulation of those assessors, and we have standards in place. We do not yet have formal regulation of who is permitted to carry out those assessments; that is a work in progress, and we really encourage that the pace of that work is maintained and that it is brought in as soon as possible.