Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a great pleasure to appear before you once again, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), and other Members, on the formidable platoon of people who they marshal on this issue on a regular basis. As our call for evidence on the technical review of building regulations fire safety guidance is closing, I welcome this opportunity to respond to the debate.

I hope hon. Members recognise that ensuring that people are and feel safe in their homes is a priority for the Government, and that includes all parts of the Government, both elected and non-elected. Notwithstanding remarks by a number of Members about the official advice that Ministers receive, I hope people recognise that officials in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are as dedicated to the cause of fire safety as everyone else, and that their views and the advice they give are drawn from as wide a range of experts in the field as possible. As the former member of the London Assembly responsible for the constituency that contains Grenfell Tower, it is of particular importance to me that we reach a resolution on this issue quickly.

Before coming to sprinklers, I wish to update hon. Members about wider work that is under way on fire safety. In the immediate aftermath of the terrible Grenfell fire we acted quickly to establish the building safety programme, which worked tirelessly to identify and remediate buildings with unsafe cladding. Thanks to the testing and hard work of local authorities, we are confident that we have identified all social housing with unsafe ACM cladding systems in England, and we have made good progress in making those buildings permanently safe. Of the 158 social sector buildings, 125 have either started or completed remediation, and plans and commitments are in place to remediate the remaining 33 buildings. To help ensure swift progress, we have made £400 million available to social sector landlords to fund that remediation. I regret, however, that remediation in the private sector has been more challenging, with negotiations in some instances disappointingly slow.

Since Grenfell, we have worked intensively with local authorities to identify high-rise buildings with ACM cladding, and we have provided £1.3 million to assist them. Local authorities across England have assessed around 6,000 private sector high-rise buildings. They needed to take samples to test, and in some cases legal action was required to get owners to co-operate in that testing. We have taken strong action to give local authorities the support they need to enforce the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding. We have established a taskforce to oversee the remediation of private sector buildings, as well as a joint inspection team to support local authorities in pursuing enforcement action.

On 29 November, the Government went further and announced that we will back local authorities to take emergency action, including financial support, where building owners are not co-operating with remediation. As a result, we have made progress with commitments from owners to replace unsafe cladding. By the end of December 2018, 218 out of 266 privately owned buildings had either started, completed, or committed to remediation. Forty-eight private residential buildings remain where the owners are not currently co-operating, and that number has fallen from more than 200 buildings in June last year. We remain concerned about and engaged with leaseholders who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a difficult and stressful situation. I recently met the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse to discuss the New Providence Wharf development in his constituency.

[Sir Mike Penning]

I am really pleased, and I think all hon. Members and people around the country will be pleased about the progress made on private leasehold properties. However, no matter how hard we try, and however many threats we make, a small group will fall through the net, particularly where developers have gone into liquidation. That is exactly where the Government need to step in, sometimes with the help of insurance companies—for example, when the situation with mesothelioma was terrible and many people did not get the compensation they deserved, we stepped in and put a tariff on those insurers. All these properties will have been insured, and people should get the compensation they need.

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[Kit Malthouse]

I recognise the point that my right hon. Friend makes; he is quite right. Of the remaining private sector buildings, there are some where there is a dispute about the extent or type of cladding—whether it is thin or decorative, and what percentage of the building it covers—but there are a small number where the situation that he raises will pertain, where for reasons of absence, insolvency or intransigence we may need to take more forceful action.

I have said that if local authorities assess that there is a category 1 hazard and a threat to life in a building, they have the power to enter that building, do the necessary work and we will support them financially in doing so. In the final analysis that can be the result, but we are considering what action we can take in the circumstances that my right hon. Friend raises. I would like to reassure everybody that the Secretary of State and I, as well as senior officials, are engaged in serious and intense discussions with building owners to try and resolve these situations.

Our timber fire doors testing programme is almost complete; there have been no failed tests to date. However, we had previous issues with glass-reinforced plastic composite fire doors and we stepped in quickly to ensure that defective products were removed. My Department has been working with industry to ensure that defective doors already in situ will be remediated. We have not stopped there. While the focus on aluminium composite material cladding following the Grenfell Tower fire was the right priority, we are now moving into a phase of testing a range of non-ACM cladding, such as zinc and high-pressure laminate cladding. Those tests are starting shortly.

We will take the advice of the independent expert advisory panel on these findings and take appropriate action. At this stage I am not able to say what that might entail. It could be further advice to owners, it could mean further testing or it could mean further remediation of residential high-rise buildings if necessary. I will ensure hon. Members are kept updated on this important area of work.

Alongside the focus on remediation, my Department is taking forward the recommendations in Dame Judith Hackitt’s report. We published our implementation plan in December, which set out the principles of our approach, and a more detailed consultation is expected later in the spring.

One priority, alongside the remediation work and the recommendations in Dame Judith’s report, has been to deal with immediate issues of concern. At the end of November we introduced new regulations implementing the ban on the use of combustible materials in the external walls of high-rise buildings. These regulations are now fully in force. In December we issued strengthened guidance on assessments in lieu of tests. We consulted last year on a clarified version of the building regulations fire safety guidance, approved document B. We received more than 1,300 comments on the draft, which we have been working through. We are working towards publishing the revised, clarified guidance later in the spring.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, we issued a call for evidence to inform our technical review of the fire safety guidance, which will close shortly. We have received 150 responses and I am grateful for the input of the all-party parliamentary group on fire safety to this work, which is shaping the debate. I cannot go into the full detail of what that call for evidence covered, because of time constraints, but it sets out a wide range of issues, across the full range of topics covered by approved document B, many of which have been mentioned by hon. Members today, although of course it was open to stakeholders to suggest other issues for consideration.

This debate has focused particularly on sprinkler systems. I understand the urgency and passion with which hon. Members have expressed themselves today and I share their desire for the Government to address the issue quickly. The call for evidence asked for data and views on sprinkler provision. Current building regulations guidance sets provisions for sprinklers in flats in blocks of flats over 30 metres tall. I know that there is intense debate about what should be considered to be the right height threshold; that debate is taking place in Scotland at the moment.

I am also conscious that the Scottish and Welsh Governments have recently taken action or are about to take action on this matter. These are obviously important considerations for the position in England. Members will understand that at this stage in what is essentially a legal process, I cannot make any firm commitments beyond reinforcing the point that we will consider the responses to the call for evidence carefully. We will set out our plans for how we propose to respond to the call for evidence as soon as we can. I recognise the need for speed.

Building regulations only apply when building work is under way. There is a separate question about whether sprinkler systems should be retrofitted to existing buildings, and, if so, how and whether this should be mandated. Retrofitting of sprinkler systems into existing tower blocks may not always be the answer to ensuring fire safety. Members may have seen that there was an enormous Ocado warehouse fire in my constituency a few weeks ago. I understand that the warehouse had an extensive fire suppression and sprinkler system, and it still went up in flames. Happily, there were no casualties but nevertheless it has left about 800 of my constituents worried about their future employment.

Decisions on whether to install a fire suppression system should be informed by a robust analysis of the specifics of a building, in consultation with the fire services. It was with this in mind that my Department offered local authorities a significant package of financial flexibilities through the housing revenue account, if they undertook analysis and decided that the installation of sprinklers was the right way forward. No local authorities have taken up the offer of these flexibilities to date, but I am willing to discuss the issue with any of them who may be considering taking up the offer made.

In the future we would expect the safety case approach for existing high-risk residential buildings, as recommended by Dame Judith Hackitt and which we will be implementing, to be the vehicle for building owners to consider what risk mitigation measures, including sprinkler systems, they need to consider and put in place. In doing so, if there is pressure from residents in any particular building to provide sprinklers, then I would expect local authorities and landlords to be alive to that and consider their options carefully.

I thank hon. Members for raising this important issue and for all their contributions. It is a timely debate, given the stage we are at in considering the review of approved document B, and I can assure the House that we will consider the issues raised today very carefully. I recognise the passion and commitment Members have for this cause, particularly those in the APPG. I also recognise the concern across the country among residents who live in high-rise buildings and feel insecure, whether that is because of the cladding or the general atmosphere around fire safety. It is critical for us as a Government to get this right, and I can reassure everybody that we will give it as much energy and urgency as we possibly can.