Draft Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am pleased to speak about this statutory instrument, which as Members will see contains a set of technical amendments to the Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) Regulations 2023. The instrument is designed to ensure that the regulations work exactly as intended, with clear, workable rules for regulators and building control professionals, and effective protections for third parties.

By way of context, the responsible actors scheme exists to make sure that eligible developers take responsibility for remediating life-critical fire safety defects in residential buildings over 11 metres that they developed or refurbished in the 30 years to 4 April 2022. Forty-five developers have joined the responsible actors scheme. Together, they are responsible for remediating more than 2,500 buildings, at an estimated cost of around £4.1 billion. The scheme is backed by planning and building control prohibitions, which would be applied to eligible developers that decide not to join the scheme or have their membership revoked for non-compliance, as well as to entities they control. The amendments in the instrument are concerned with how those prohibitions and their exceptions would operate in practice if a developer is prohibited in the future.

Since the scheme was launched in 2023, technical drafting issues and ambiguities have been identified. The purpose of the instrument is to address those issues, so that protections for residents and purchasers of property work as intended if prohibitions are needed.

First, the instrument will remove an ambiguity in the 2023 regulations. If a developer were to be prohibited, that developer should not be able to make building control applications, but the original regulations did not spell that out explicitly in the list of prohibited matters. The amendments resolve that by making clear that building control applications are included wherever the prohibitions apply. The amendments also update terminology, so that the process of issuing completion and partial completion certificates matches the way that building control now operates, preventing confusion for local authorities and private registered building control approvers.

Secondly, the instrument will ensure that the emergency repairs exception works properly. Under the exception, emergency safety repairs are allowed to go ahead if a developer is prohibited. For taller buildings, there is a route to get such work formally signed off afterwards, but an omission in the 2023 regulations means that that route does not currently exist for buildings below 18 metres in height. The amendments correct this, creating a route so that, should such a situation arise, urgent safety work can be properly checked and signed off for all buildings.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward, and to see my hon. Friend the Minister in her place. I want to understand a bit more about the operation of the prohibitions list. I note from the Department’s webpage that there are no suppliers or providers on that list. Is that because no one has fallen foul of the regulations, or because they were so inadequately drafted in the first place that it was not possible to put people on the list?

[Samantha Dixon]

My hon. Friend tempts me to get into a debate about the efficacy of the original—

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

I rise because I listened carefully to the Minister and there was an inherent contradiction in her opening remarks. The legislation was presented as minor, technical and not significant—in fact so insignificant that it has no impact assessment, as is referred to in paragraph 9 of the explanatory memorandum. Yet it states in paragraph 5.3 that the legislation deals with

“developers who refuse to remediate life-critical fire safety defects”,

so we are talking about a hugely significant issue, on which many hon. Members in the Labour party have, post-Grenfell, quite rightly campaigned. It is an issue through which many home owners have been left in limbo.

One would have thought that legislation introduced to the House on that important issue, legislation which can remediate life-critical fire safety defects, would be significant, particularly when paragraph 5.6 goes on to state that the consequences for non-compliance with the legislation are severe because the regulations prevent a developer from completing other major developments. That is a very significant tool to ensure that critical fire safety issues are addressed and that those developers who behave irresponsibly can be held to account. I would again expect there to be agreement across the House on that. Labour Members have no doubt campaigned for such developers to be held to account, and that is in the SI: there is a clear lever with which developers who have not taken action on critical fire safety issues can be, in essence, stopped from selling their future developments. That is what the legislation is all about.

A third piece of evidence is the manifesto on which Labour Members stood. In the general election campaign, Labour said it wanted to “take decisive action” on this issue. What better opportunity for taking decisive action than introducing legislation to the House? Yet the Minister does not even seem to comply with paragraph 10.1— I have not seen any notes from officials to help her out either—which states that the Department should already be publishing data on progress. We are almost two years into their Administration and, as I pointed out, no less than the Housing Minister himself tabled parliamentary questions on this issue.

The Housing Minister has a burning constituency issue with a controversial developer in his own constituency that, in January of last year, was subjected to a fine of some £7.8 million by the Planning Inspectorate. Is it not odd that we cannot get any information on any firms that have been put on the prohibitions list in the last two years, including the one that was apparently connected to a “mutant development” in the Housing Minister’s own constituency?

[Justin Madders]

The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Housing Minister would have to recuse himself of any involvement in a matter involving his own constituency.

[Steve Barclay]

Of course, but I am sure that he, as a constituency MP, would diligently lobby his colleagues in the appropriate way to take action. I would also think that the Housing team as a whole would share his view that where a developer in the constituency that he represents has behaved in a way that has led to a £7.8 million fine, that might be within scope of the decisive action talked about in the Labour manifesto.

What I find remarkable is that the Minister does not seem to know. She has come to the Committee today to present legislation, and when she answered the question asked by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough, I did not hear her mention a single firm that was on the prohibitions list. I therefore followed up with a specific question, to try to help her out. I asked about the Comer Group because that is one of the most high profile ones; it was raised before the last election by her own colleague, and she does not even know about the Housing Minister’s own concern.

We are being told today that this is an opportunity to take action against developers who have failed to do the right thing on critical fire safety issues, yet two years in the Minister cannot update the House on any decisive action that has been taken. The Department is saying publicly that it publishes regular data and we are here debating the legislation today and colleagues are being asked to vote on it. Again, there is nothing in this legislation that I disagree with. Cancelling out a double negative and giving a bit of clarity in the language is all fine and well, but what a wasted opportunity!

Why is the Minister presenting legislation without knowing the basic facts, such as how many developers have been put on the prohibitions list? She has had time for her officials to give her a note. I hope that when she sums up the debate we will get the number of firms on the prohibitions list and specifically whether the Comer Group is on it. The officials have their laptops open. I am sure they can send an email to the Department—