Building Safety Bill

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the fact that the Bill will give residents and homeowners more rights and make homes throughout the country safer. It seeks to improve the whole fire safety regime from start to finish.

In my constituency in 2019, we had the terrible fire at the Beechmere retirement complex that destroyed the building, leaving more than 150 people without their homes and with their belongings destroyed. I pay tribute to Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service for its work in battling the blaze and I thank the local heroes who helped residents to evacuate. What happened at the building is, of course, at the front of my mind. We are still to find out the cause of the fire, and I have met Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service regularly to push it to conclude its investigations so that people get answers.

Although the focus of this debate has rightly been on external cladding and high-rise buildings, we must ensure that we use this moment of fire safety reform to act on risks across the board. I want to focus on asking the Government to go further and be more prescriptive with those buildings that use timber or that house or are used by vulnerable people, irrespective of building height. What I wish to talk about relates to approved document B and building bulletin 100, but I am sure the Minister will understand my raising those issues in the context of the Bill.

On the issue of timber, the Beechmere building was timber-framed and what happened seemed to reflect what has happened at many other fires in similar buildings. There is a wealth of long-standing concerns about the use of timber, and not just in relation to external frames. There are particular concerns about how in a timber building post-completion works and modifications can easily destroy fire safety measures. We must ensure that that risk is properly addressed.

On the second issue, we must think more carefully about restrictions based on what a building is used for. It is proportionate to make specific mandated additional requirements for buildings such as schools and care homes, which house people who will struggle to evacuate. An example of such a requirement would be for sprinklers. I and my colleagues on the all-party group on fire safety and rescue have highlighted that automatic fire sprinklers are compulsory in new care homes in Wales and Scotland but not in England—the same is true in respect of schools. Research conducted by the National Fire Chiefs Council found that in almost 1,000 fires over five years in buildings where sprinklers were fitted they controlled or extinguished blazes in 99% of cases. Automatic fire sprinklers save lives and allow children back into the classroom sooner.

I know that the Secretary of State wants a dynamic, responsive system that is not overly prescriptive, but at this stage, when we cannot yet know what a whole new regime is going to deliver in terms of better decision making on a building-by-building basis, we should be more cautious and risk adverse, and have an approach that mandates specific measures such as sprinklers for certain building types and additional measures for certain building materials such as timber, regardless of height. I welcome the Bill and the reforms it will make to building control and building regulations, but it is vital that the Government go further and provide additional protections to certain buildings, so that we can all be confident that the buildings we live, work and learn in are as safe as possible.