Asked by: Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the responsibilities of the National House Building Council for UK building safety.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
I refer my Hon Friend to my answer to Question UIN 122751 on 21 February 2022.
Asked by: Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what plans the Government has to improve the quality of building safety checks nationally.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Building Safety Bill currently in the House of Lords marks the next step in the Government’s ongoing reforms to make sure everyone’s home is a place of safety. The Bill is part of a package of legislative changes to move things forward and make sure the problems Dame Judith Hackitt identified with the current building and fire safety regime are rectified. The package includes the measures in the Fire Safety Act 2021 and changes to the Fire Safety Order alongside the current Building Safety Bill.
The new regime established through the Building Safety Bill will:
The Department has also taken steps to ensure that industry takes a proportionate approach in the assessment of the external walls of buildings. The government has supported the development of guidance which aims to provide risk proportionate guidance to competent assessors. This guidance (PAS 9980) provides new advice on how to assess the risk of fire via an external wall of an existing multi-storey, multi-occupied residential building. It sets out steps that can be taken to identify and assess risk factors as well as mitigation measures that might improve the risk rating of a building via a holistic and fact-based assessment of a building’s construction.
Asked by: Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the National House Building Council’s role in overseeing building regulations.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Under the current system, Approved Inspectors such as NHBC are independently monitored and regulated by CICAIR Ltd to carry out building control work in England (and Wales). CICAIR Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Construction Industry Council (CIC) and the approval process it operates provides a route to registration as an Approved Inspector.
The Building Safety Regulator will be responsible for oversight of the competence and performance of building control professionals and the building control bodies in which they work, taking a wider view of the professionalism and culture that needs to support building safety in all classes of work, not just in-scope buildings. To do this, we are introducing a system of oversight of the performance of building control bodies (Local Authorities and Registered Building Control Approvers), and a system of individual registration based on competence and adherence to a code of conduct, all overseen by the Building Safety Regulator.