Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Pidcock Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)]

1. How much Government funding has been allocated to local authorities for remedial fire safety work as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)]

The Government will consider providing financial flexibilities for local authorities to undertake essential fire safety work to make buildings safe. We have not turned down any requests for such flexibilities. Separately, we have provided funding to local authorities for the collection of data on private buildings.

[Laura Pidcock]

Before Christmas, the former Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), revealed that 36 local authorities had contacted the Department about work to secure fire safety in tower blocks, but none of them have received any financial help so far—why not?

[Sajid Javid]

Let me update the hon. Lady. My records show that the number of authorities is still 36. We have requested further information from 10 of them, and four have provided it. As I said a moment ago, however, we are ready to provide any local authority with whatever financial flexibilities are necessary to ensure that all essential fire safety work is done.