Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Joe Powell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

I wish we did not have to be here debating this Bill today—first and foremost because we are doing so largely due to the Grenfell Tower fire, more than nine years ago. It is right that we again remember the 72 who lost their lives in an entirely avoidable fire, and recognise the suffering that the bereaved, survivors and Grenfell community in my constituency continue to endure.

I place on record my thanks to the Prime Minister for his commitment, at Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, to work with me every day for justice for the victims. I also thank the Secretary of State for her determination to find solutions across Government that will implement the Grenfell inquiry recommendations and make necessary changes to how our state functions, including on building safety. Our hope and expectation is that those responsible will face the full force of the law by May next year, when the Crown Prosecution Service makes its charging decisions on the 20 organisations and 54 individuals passed to it by the Metropolitan police. While we wait, almost 10 years on, for justice through criminal accountability, we must also pursue justice through meaningful change in policies, laws and culture. That is how I approach the Bill.

The second reason I wish we were not here is that I believe many of the provisions in the Bill should have been enacted a long time ago and, at very least, should have been part of the Building Safety Act 2022. How is it that, in a similar timeframe since Grenfell, the state of Victoria in Australia has completed works on 99% of the 1,600 buildings that needed remediation, while we have completed only 39% of 4,724 identified buildings? More have not even been assessed, which is something the Bill tries to address. In 2020, Victoria passed a law setting up a group that assessed all buildings over three storeys, identified those at risk using a common state-prescribed standard and then paid for the work via an up-front fund, in part capitalised by developer contributions.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

What the hon. Member is saying is excellent. Does he accept that there is a cultural issue here? The dangerous cladding on Grenfell, as in many other places, was dismissed as being unimportant because the people living there were often poor, working-class families, and they were simply not cared about. I hope that the Bill will change that culture, as well as bringing safety to an awful lot of people.

[Joe Powell]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Residents who raised concerns were ignored, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea made a decision to cut costs that resulted in the contract that ended up being a major contributory factor in what happened. I have not had the chance to say this on the record, but I am pleased that one of the individuals involved in that is no longer at the Barnet tenant management organisation. That decision was wrong, and it has been corrected. I am glad that that has been done.

In short, in Victoria the government stepped in and put homeowners and residents first. In this country, the previous Government took a market-based approach that has comprehensively failed to deliver remediation in a timely way. Why? It is because, for too long, the British state has been too passive in the face of this problem, relying on private developers to come up with the answers while millions of people suffer the consequences. The British state’s response to the cladding scandal has exposed many of the weaknesses that this Government want to fix: unaccountable power, opaque ownership and a shirking of responsibility; penny-wise cost cutting that stores up massive costs in the future; and a lack of public control over the basics of life, including housing.

I hope that the Bill will contribute to that effort by creating more jeopardy for those delaying remediation and more options to finally fix every building that needs it, but the work to make buildings safe must continue even while we debate the Bill. Existing powers such as remediation orders and remediation contribution orders can be useful tools if Ministers provide a hands-on grip on the crisis by co-ordinating local remediation plans, creating national standards and ensuring that tomorrow’s Budget continues to fund the Department to get the work moving now. We need belatedly to shift to a “fix first and fast” model based on risk, as the Secretary of State said, leveraging all existing avenues to get work started.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I concur with my hon. Friend’s tribute to those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy and to their loved ones. I remember the shock in this place when that tragedy happened.

I have a real concern about tolerability and how fire safety is assessed. This is something that built up over generations, and my hon. Friend gave a summary of it. Decisions on building safety were left to the wrong people; there was no outside inspection. Tolerability is a subjective standard, rather than a safe set of fixed standards. Does my hon. Friend have anything to say about that? We need to be clear as we go forward about fixing that problem and ensuring that it is not down to individuals. Some developers cherry-pick who will assess the building safety of a block, knowing that some people will pass it when others would be more rigorous. That is not an acceptable situation.

[Joe Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. At the very least, there needs to be independent scrutiny of these assessments so that people can feel reassured that someone is checking whether they pass muster. It should be about the whole of the building being made safe—I think the Secretary of State referred to that. Cladding defects are an extremely important component, but there are internal fire defects that also need to be assessed, which have contributed to rising costs.

I welcome the remediation backstop in the Bill that will give Homes England and local authorities the power to step in, but that should not only be a tool of last resort. It should be something that gets the system moving as quickly as possible, because leaseholders in particular have ended up shouldering the burden in recent years. To give one example—others have already spoken about leaseholders they represent—residents at Shaftesbury Place in Earl’s Court approached me in 2024 after receiving huge increases in their service charge, driven by a disputed fire risk assessment which led to a massive spike in insurance premiums for the building from £15,000 a year to £310,000. The following year it went to £375,000. For one leaseholder, their annual bill for the insurance went from £269 to £4,146.

The landlord, Notting Hill Genesis, which is in a shared ownership scheme, told leaseholders that the insurance rise was linked to a fire risk assessment that it had commissioned, but residents disputed it alongside the classification of the building as high-rise. In fact, it had even miscalculated the number of storeys in the building when it did the assessment, which obviously undermined confidence in that assessment. The Building Safety Regulator later agreed and removed the building from the high-rise register. Until recently, several residents were still receiving legal threats about the non-payment of those charges, causing them huge worry and anxiety—let alone their concerns about the value of their investment in the shared ownership scheme.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. The insurance issue is a big concern—it is something the Treasury Committee is looking into. Does he not agree that there is a problem with the industry? The premiums have gone up exponentially, and although there is an increased risk, the likelihood of it crystallising has not been proved to be as high as the insurance industry has said. Does my hon. Friend have any further thoughts on that?

[Joe Powell]

My experience from this case corroborates what my hon. Friend says. I met the Association of British Insurers, and the scheme it introduced subsequently kicked in and has in the last year brought down the buildings insurance, but only by about half—certainly not to anywhere near what it used to be. I hope that Ministers can look at insurance when thinking about protecting leaseholders from higher costs.

The end of the story for the building is that, following pressure from me and my team and from organisers in the building, Notting Hill Genesis has finally agreed to reimburse all the residents. It will repay the difference in the increase for the past several years. I thank Thomas, Hamid, Ian and all the other residents in that building for their work. That is just one example of what is happening in building after building across the country.

I welcome the Bill in the sense that it is an opportunity to fix some of the flaws left by the previous Government and to create a better system, including through the register, a consistent approach to external walls in fire risk assessments, and by listening to campaigners across the country, such as End Our Cladding Scandal, who have helped to give a voice to those most affected. I know that they will have the ear of the Secretary of State and Ministers as the Bill continues its passage.

Clearly, one element at the heart of the Bill is who should pay. I agree that it is high time that the construction product manufacturers who contributed to the cause of this crisis should pay towards resolving it. I really welcome part 5 of the Bill, which strengthens and extends provisions in the Building Safety Act on retrospective liability for cladding products, and the Secretary of State’s announcement today on the Government’s intention to go further. The Grenfell inquiry found that companies including Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex engaged in systematic dishonesty and deliberate manipulation of testing that misled buyers into thinking their products were safe. It is extraordinary that, aside from their payments into a civil settlement, these companies have not paid towards resolving a crisis of their making. In Arconic’s case, its civil settlement was overwhelmingly covered by its insurance and was dwarfed by the payment it made to its own shareholders in compensation.

It is clearly not right that leaseholders, taxpayers and even the developer levy should shoulder the bulk of the costs, while companies such as Arconic do not. That is yet another reason that they should be nowhere near public contracts and supply chains, especially while criminal investigations are ongoing. I know the Secretary of State is committed to working across Government to use every procurement power the Government have to ensure that that is not happening, and I will fully support her in that goal. I also look forward to the new system of construction products regulation being implemented, with consistent safety standards and a single products regulator under the Building Safety Regulator; that will make a big difference.

I am glad that protection from costs for leaseholders has been discussed in the Bill and the debate so far. They are not responsible for this crisis, yet they are the ones picking up the bill in far too many cases. I hope these new powers will give local remediation efforts such as the London Joint Remediation Partnership Board an extra tool to do the building-by-building analysis that cuts through the bureaucracy and delays to find a solution.

I am sure that the communities who have enfranchised their buildings or exercised right to manage will be really pleased to hear the announcement today on ensuring that they are protected. We want more leaseholders to take control of their buildings, appoint their own agents and run their own affairs. We will see more in the leasehold Bill soon, and it is right that the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill should provide some consistency in protecting them, too.

The building safety crisis has become one of the defining symbols of state failure in the past decade. The entirely avoidable tragedy of Grenfell and the loss of 72 lives should have been a catalyst to making buildings safe as quickly as possible and recovering the costs later. Of course, if we had listened to the coroner after the Lakanal House fire in 2009, not only may it have been possible to prevent the Grenfell fire, but we could have put a halt to new build flats across the country being constructed with cladding that was putting lives at risk. Judge Frances Kirkham said then that approved document B of the building regulations concerning external fire spread, fire-resisting properties and cladding panels should be reviewed. That simply did not happen in the way it should have done, as the public inquiry found.

That missed opportunity is devastating for the Grenfell families but it is also devastating for everyone who bought a flat across the country in a building that could have been built or refurbished differently if that recommendation had been implemented. Think of the billions of pounds wasted that could have been invested in building more homes, including social and affordable homes. That is why I will continue to campaign for a national oversight mechanism to ensure that there is independent scrutiny of recommendations of inquests and inquiries, so that change actually happens. I am delighted that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Minister are supportive of that effort, and I hope we can now make rapid progress towards setting it up.

The Prime Minister said something at the homelessness summit on Monday that really resonated with me: “names not numbers”. He was talking about how to best support people off the streets. We need a similar approach to this crisis. Behind every statistic is a family who are stuck, who cannot sell their home, who are worried about the value of their main asset and who have had to take on another job of chasing for answers about when the work will be finished, all while they suffer the anxiety of living in an unsafe building.

I hope today marks a shift in approach under a Government who I know are absolutely committed to doing all they can to end this scandal once and for all. The new tools in this Bill will certainly help, and the ones announced at the Dispatch Box today will help even further. With the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the ministerial team providing the leadership that this crisis needs, I am sure we can right the wrongs of the previous approach and deliver the solutions that so many people across the country are crying out for.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.