Building Safety Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Marie Rimmer and Siobhan Baillie

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Rimmer]

Q This is a building safety Bill; it is not about redressing the cladding or the issues with that. If anything, on the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government it was said that the introduction of the building service charge brought about the highest level of anger and scepticism they had ever experienced. That is all that the people affected can see in this Bill, so it goes nowhere near addressing anything like that. If anything, it has caused a concern: would they—could they—use the building service charge to recover historical costs from the leaseholders? We have heard from witnesses that they think it is not clear that that is not the case.

It seems to me that polluter pays is the only suggestion that can go forward. We are not saying that the present Government are responsible for all this, but do you know of any other way than the polluter pays mechanism? Is it New Zealand that has the public safety emergency, where the Government have addressed that? It does not seem able to be addressed. Has anyone put forward to you any other schemes or other ways of addressing this? There are hundreds of thousands of family units in these properties—I do express my sympathy; I sincerely empathise and sympathise—but this simply must be addressed.

Alison Hills: Yes, thank you. It does have to be addressed. Obviously, there are the McPartland-Smith amendments, which protect leaseholders to some degree. There are some very helpful amendments—for example, the imposition of implied terms in residential building contracts to ensure that all buildings are adequately designed, comply with building safety regulations and use materials of satisfactory quality. New clause 5 also creates accountability for future builders by importing consumer rights protection into housing law. I fully support the amendments and new clauses, and I think they should be implemented in the Bill, but in terms of how to get the most amount of money from those responsible, the polluter pays Bill is the way forward, because it ensures that the right people are held to account and building safety regulations are adhered to in future. Obviously, Steve has worked very hard on this over the last nine months, so I will pass over to him at this point.

Steve Day: I think the building safety charge is another sign of not trusting building regulation compliance. The heart of polluter pays is not just to solve the crisis now; it is to restore trust in building regulation compliance. We have a set of functional regulations. B4 requires that

“the external walls of the building shall adequately resist the spread of fire”.

It should be very possible, then, with the approved documents, to show and to prove whether someone is liable for those defects.

We are getting very confused in this crisis. We need to bring it back to the two boxes of developments. We have one where the builders just did not keep to the regulations. We do not need to worry about the quality of the regulations—they just did not keep to them, not using the right fixings. Metal should be on firebreaks but they used plastic. Some are missing firebreaks. It is very simple stuff, which is very unappealable and very easy—low-hanging fruit. That is the box of not conforming to the regulations at the time—guilty. Not guilty, for the developers and the manufacturers, is the other box where the regulations were complied with at the time, but post Grenfell those regulations have changed. It is almost a retrospective liability, changing the goalposts. That is a failure of regulation, so that is where the public money would come in.

All we want is £5.1 billion of public money. We do not want to go to the Treasury unless we have to. We want to get that pot as big as possible for all those defective buildings—it is simple stuff, remember, such as fixings, adhesive pattern, firebreaks and so on—to make that £5.1 billion go further. That is what we are doing. I hope that our proposal shows that we have thought about how this might work with existing precedents. There is some discussion on whether the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the apportionment process could be open to judicial review, because you might say, “If you’ve got a set of percentages and you’re just giving x per cent, y per cent, and so on, that could be open to challenge.” We have listened to that and we are working with Daniel Greenberg on a different, and much simpler, approach, which we will make you aware of, that will not be open so easily for judicial review.

We also heard Mr Pincher’s comments in the Chamber on how many determinations we have to do. Remember that we are proposing that it is a public body, potentially under Homes England, and we have a de minimis limit. We do not have the reports that MHCLG has but we have a mechanism. It can set what the de minimis limit is before we have those determinations, and then basically there is a control mechanism for how this works. We have created the scheme so that in the primary legislation the scheme requirements are set out. It has to be in place six months after Royal Assent, but we do not prescribe exactly all the parts of the legislation; that will be done in subordinate legislation. We are prepared to do that work as well, because that is how much we believe in this.

I cannot answer all your questions on this today, but Daniel Greenberg has said that when the conference season is over, we will book a meeting room in Parliament and invite MPs and peers to come and hear our proposal, with the depth required so that you can scrutinise it properly. Perhaps the Earl of Lytton might come and help as well.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q Thank you both for coming. You are very compelling witnesses, and you have a great skill in being able to talk about something that is incredibly emotional to you, for understandable reasons, and give us a really clear account of what you are seeking to achieve and why.

I want to move you slightly off the redress issue. We have heard witness evidence today that, over two decades, multiple Governments of all colours have failed to address building safety issues. That is high rises and all sorts of things.

This Government are genuinely trying to do their best with the Bill, and we have had evidence that says that it is moving quite a few mountains and is proportionate. You are so expert in this area—although I am sure neither of you want to be such—what do you know about the accountable person part of the Bill? It is suggesting that for a block there would be somebody who would be in charge of things such as fire safety certificates and the gas certificate. They would be the point person. We have heard evidence today from the Fire Brigades Union that was really positive about such a role in terms of the person that they can contact, and similarly the management agent said it was really good to have a single person as a point of contact. We have also heard evidence that no one will take on that role—because it has so many duties and responsibilities that no one will be interested. What is your view? I fear that you two may be that role because you are so expert. Knowing your kind of neighbours, do you think somebody would take that role on if the Bill is enacted?

Alison Hills: First and foremost, there is a lot of information in the Bill about an accountable person, a responsible person, but there does not seem to be a clearly defined role for each of those roles and responsibilities. I think that needs to be done. Secondly, our management agents already have a certain amount of responsibility in terms of building safety. As leaseholders, we do not want to be in a position where we are potentially paying twice for the same service. The Bill needs to contain clear definitions of the responsible person, the accountable person, the management agent and the role of the leaseholder. In my view, each of those roles needs a clear definition.