Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Christopher Pincher

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

5. What steps his Department is taking to increase home ownership.

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

As a Government we are determined to level up opportunities across our country, and that starts with building the homes that our people need. That is why we are helping millions of people into home ownership. Since 2010, Government-backed schemes have helped over 756,000 households to purchase their own dream home. Last June, we launched our new flagship First Homes scheme, providing homes discounted by at least 30% for first-time buyers, with a priority for local residents and key workers.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

First Homes is an excellent initiative that could deliver homes in my constituency for local first-time buyers at even below half price. Will the Minister accelerate their delivery through section 106 agreements, pilot their delivery on public sector land in my constituency, and rename the policy from First Homes to “Half-Price Homes”, because then people would understand it much more clearly?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend, who is a doughty campaigner for home ownership, teases me. He wishes me to call First Homes “Half-Price Homes”. Perhaps that will become the shorthand name for this project. Perhaps even, in time, they will be known as Hollinrake homes. As to his other questions, we are already commissioning First Homes properties on both public and private sector land through our two early delivery programmes. We are aiming to deliver 1,500 of them before April 2023, and we certainly want to accelerate the programme so that more people are able to achieve the dream home that they want and deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Christopher Pincher

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady and the House know full well that our green credentials are second to none. The hon. Lady also knows that I will not and cannot comment on an individual planning application. What I can say is that there is a high bar to be passed for a local decision to be assessed by the Secretary of State. We believe—the law believes—that it is always best to leave local communities to make decisions for themselves, and that is what we have done in this case.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to promote home ownership.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Christopher Pincher

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend, who I know is a doughty campaigner for his constituents in Ipswich. I shall be addressing the issue of the waking watch and the support measures that we are putting in place as I move through my remarks.

I should also say that around 95% of all high-rise ACM buildings identified before the beginning of last year, across both the public and private sectors, are either fully remediated or have seen work commence on site. Indeed, all the buildings with unsafe ACM cladding in the constituency of the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) constituency have at least seen works start, if they are not already fully completed. These figures bear testament to the progress that we have made, the pressure that we have successfully exerted and the action that we have taken over the last three and a half years to get this job done. Where funding alone has not been enough to increase the pace of remediation, the Government have not hesitated to direct expert support to projects. Where building owners have still failed to take action despite that support, we have backed robust enforcement measures, spurring them to act without delay. Indeed, there have been 57 enforcement actions so far, 19 of which have been supported by the Government’s joint inspection team.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way very briefly, and then I must make some progress.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very grateful the Minister. He refers to building owners. Clearly, where there is a contractual obligation for building owners to remediate, that is absolutely right, but does he accept that lots of building owners have no contractual obligation—no legal obligation—to carry out that work? At Nova House in Slough, for example, the building owner simply gave it back to the local authority, which then issued service charges to the residents because there was no contractual obligation for anybody else to do the work. Perhaps we need to look at a wider community, rather than just building owners, to provide a funding solution for this problem.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on the nub of the matter, which is the complexity of the situation with which we and those people who find themselves in this difficult situation have to grapple, and that is what the Government are doing.

The Government initially focused our efforts on ACM cladding of the type used on Grenfell Tower because it poses the most severe safety risk on high-rise residential buildings, but we recognise that other forms of unsafe cladding, although less dangerous than ACM, should never have been used. Although many building owners have taken action, some have not. Too many building owners and managing agents in the private sector have been slow in getting remediation work started, which is why we introduced the £1 billion building safety fund to remediate high-rise residential buildings with unsafe non-ACM cladding as soon as possible and protect the leaseholders from burdensome costs.

We received 2,840 registrations for the fund, and have been able to make eligibility decisions on a significant number of them that were fully completed. It is disappointing that, despite our requirements having been made clear from the outset, many building owners have been unable to provide the basic information needed to advance works, including information such as the height of their building, the EWS systems on their walls and even sample lease agreements. We have been engaging with registrants and the industry bodies to understand the challenges they have in meeting the deadlines, and have set a new deadline of June based on what we now know about the registrants and their readiness to be able to deliver.

Building owners should be in no doubt: it is vital that dangerous cladding is removed as fast as possible, and the Government will not tolerate unnecessary delays. If they can collect the service charges, they can get the remediation on their buildings done. That applies just as much to small blocks of flats as it does to large ones, and we have given clear expert advice on a range of safety issues for buildings of all heights. Public funding has rightly been focused on remediating unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings of 18 metres-plus. That reflects the exceptional fire risk that certain cladding products pose at that height, as Dame Judith Hackitt observed in her report into fire safety. However, our guidance is unambiguous in stating that building safety is the responsibility of building owners, irrespective of whether their buildings are above or below 18 metres in height. The Government will continue to ensure that building owners—the ones who are ultimately responsible for making sure that these homes are safe—do the right thing.

We have targeted remediation funding where it is needed most: removing and replacing cladding on high-rise residential buildings. Interim safety measures such as waking watch have in many cases been used to ensure that the safety of residents in buildings with unsafe cladding is maintained. However, we are clear that waking watch regimes should only ever be used in the short term, because they are an entirely inadequate substitute for remediation. Some building owners have been using them for too long and have been passing on costs, which are unsustainable to leaseholders and residents, adding to the emotional distress and financial strain that they already suffer. We have been clear that that behaviour is unacceptable and cannot continue, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in December a £30 million fund to pay for the costs of installing alarm systems in buildings with unsafe cladding, thereby reducing the need for a waking watch. The fund is available across England. It is now open and I encourage those eligible not to delay but to start their applications now, so that we can urgently distribute the payments.

It is wrong and unjust for leaseholders to have to shoulder unfair costs to fix historical safety defects that they did not cause. That is why the Government have already set aside £1.6 billion in funding for cladding remediation. The funding was put in place precisely to ensure that the most dangerous types of cladding were removed as quickly as possible without imposing crippling bills on leaseholders. However, public funding does not absolve industry from taking the responsibility for the failures that led to unsafe cladding in the first place by putting materials on buildings that should not have been there.

We have seen many developers and building owners rightly taking responsibility for correcting those defects. They have done so in more than half of the high-rise private sector buildings with unsafe cladding. We absolutely expect developers, investors and building owners who have the means to pay to do the right thing and cover the costs of remediation of other unsafe cladding themselves without passing on the cost to leaseholders. However, in many cases, building owners or their managing agents have simply passed on significant remediation costs to leaseholders without regard to the affordability of those measures. That is why we have been accelerating the work to develop a financial solution to protect leaseholders from such costs. There is no quick fix. If there were, we would have done it long ago. It is complex and it involves many parties: leaseholders with different leases, developers, warranty holders, the insurance industry, the mortgage lenders, and the owners themselves. We have to find a solution that is right and proper, that demands of owners and developers that they put right the problems and defects they caused, that is fair to leaseholders who should not have to carry unfair costs for problems that they did not cause or envisage, and that is fair to the taxpayer, who is already shouldering a significant burden in remediating many buildings.

I can assure hon. Members that we will be making a further announcement on this important work “very shortly”, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at PMQs last week. We must recognise that Government funding alone cannot solve some of the deep-rooted issues surrounding building safety. As Dame Judith Hackitt concluded in her review, it is vital that we reform the entire building safety regime, and that means a fundamental change in the regulatory framework, in industry and in its culture.

We are committed to bringing forward the most significant building reform in almost 40 years, with two landmark pieces of legislation: the forthcoming Building Safety Bill that will create a more accountable system, and the Fire Safety Bill, currently before the House, which clarifies the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Taken together, these measures will improve the safety of residents in blocks of flats of all heights.

It may be worthwhile if, before I conclude, I commented on some of the amendments tabled to the Fire Safety Bill, particularly those by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), who is in his place. We fully understand what our hon. Friends are attempting to achieve in their amendments. We entirely understand that they want to remove or reduce the burden on leaseholders, and we wish to do the same. However, having looked at their amendments closely, it is clear to us that their scope, as currently drafted, would mean they would apply only to residents and leaseholders who have had a fire risk assessment undertaken, and not to residents who have suffered an incident or had works done for any other reason.  Nor are the amendments drafted in such a way as to allow them to be introduced without significant change to the Bill, both to the primary legislation and to the secondary legislation that must follow. As a result, the amendments would significantly impair the Bill’s progress through the House—they would delay it—and so, having looked carefully at my hon. Friends’ amendments, I encourage them to withdraw them.

The Building Safety Bill is the best mechanism to achieve my hon. Friends’ aims, which are to introduce a new and stronger regulatory regime for building safety in buildings of 18 metres or more in height, and for all construction products. The Bill will establish a new building safety regulator in the Health and Safety Executive, sitting at the heart of the reformed building programme. It will place clear legal duties on those who build and manage buildings in scope of the new regime to manage any risks that they create and, crucially, it will enable the regulator to enforce those laws.

In conclusion, high-rise buildings in this country should never have been fitted with dangerous or unsafe cladding. Successive Governments have failed to confront this issue, but it is this Government who are resolving it once and for all, making homes safer and protecting the residents from crippling costs, and at a pace that the severity of the situation demands. That is what we have already achieved: almost 95% of buildings identified at the beginning of last year with unsafe ACM cladding have now completed or are in the process of completing their remediation; we are advancing applications for the building safety fund; we are appointing specialist consultants to increase the pace of remediation; and we are introducing our additional landmark legislation. We will not let up. This work will be going on long after this Opposition day is over and long after the Leader of the Opposition has issued his tweet. We will not let even the pandemic, which is affecting our country and the world, slow us down. We will work to restore the inalienable right of everyone in this country to live somewhere that is decent, secure and, above all, safe—a place that they can rightly and proudly call home.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The leasehold system and its reform will form part of a Government White Paper and separate debates in this Chamber, and I am sure that the hon. Lady will play her part in those.[Official Report, 26 November 2020, Vol. 684, c. 10MC.] It is not true to say that developers and others are not funding remediation. As I have described, firms such as Pemberstone, Mace, Peabody, Barratt and, I think, Legal and General are all stepping forward with funds to remediate buildings for which they are responsible, resulting in something like 50% of ACM-clad buildings being remediated by the private sector. I do not know the specific issues of the buildings in her constituency to which she refers, but I am happy to talk to her separately about them. I am confident that the £1 billion of public money that we will set aside through the Building Safety Bill will be allocated by the end of this financial year, as we said it would be, and that remediation of those non-ACM buildings will begin.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In many cases there are insurmountable legal problems involved in trying to charge building owners and freeholders for these sums, and developers will often point the finger elsewhere. We know that responsibility lies with the developers and installers, with the manufacturers of insulation and cladding in many cases, and, let us be honest, with successive Governments for their approach to building regulations, which must be described as ambiguous. This cannot be left at the door of the leaseholders. Is it not right that the Government should now step in, increase the building safety fund, get the work done and claim back the moneys wherever possible and from whoever possible, and where they cannot, do so by means of a cross-sector levy?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend is an expert in this field and I pay tribute to him for the work that he has undertaken. Mr Wade, our adviser, is working hard with us and with the sector to develop solutions that will provide help and support to leaseholders. In the meantime, as I say, the Government have stepped up and provided a significant amount of public money to remediate the buildings that are most in need of it where there is no other means of paying, but it must be right that we ask developers and those responsible for these buildings to pay. To signal that the state will simply step in and sub them will not encourage them to do the right thing, and it is for developers, owners and warranty suppliers in the first instance to ensure that the buildings for which they are responsible are remediated.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Christopher Pincher

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

We have provided a great deal of resources for local authorities and charities to support people through this emergency. We will continue to keep those policies and programmes under review. If the hon. Gentleman has specific ideas that he wishes to suggest, I am happy to hear them.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is absolutely right that we should be fair to tenants affected by the covid crisis, and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who secured the urgent question, is right to say that we might consider giving the courts discretion over the nature of arrears. But it also has to be right that we should be fair to the neighbours of those guilty of antisocial behaviour, fair to those affected by domestic abuse and fair to landlords who were affected by arrears pre-covid, and that should be the immediate focus of the courts’ attentions.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend, as ever, puts the point eloquently, and I am sure that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service will have listened to him carefully.