Fire Safety Remediation: Leaseholders

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to add to this debate tonight. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) for his excellent speech, which covered a wide range of very serious issues that are faced by residents in towns and cities across the country. In my constituency in Reading and Woodley, we have exactly the same set of problems, which he so eloquently outlined, affecting the city of Portsmouth. I understand from colleagues across the whole country that this is a serious national problem. Indeed, it is fair to say that it is a national scandal. Three years after Grenfell, we still do not have the full set of effective measures in place to take action against these terrible fire safety problems.

Briefly, let me thank the Minister for the work that the Government are doing on some of the taller buildings, but one or two very serious issues remain. I do not want to repeat all the points made by my hon. Friend, but, I will, if I may, address one or two key points that particularly affect local people in Reading and Woodley. As many people will know, our town is growing. We are not a city, but a large town, with many taller buildings in our town centre. That is only likely to increase over time as greater development takes place in the Thames Valley. The same is true across the whole of Berkshire and, indeed, across much of England and the wider UK.

I wish to make two or three key points about the nature of the problem and the range of issues that go beyond the very tall blocks with the Grenfell-style cladding. First, on the height of the blocks, it is important to underline the point made by hon. Friend that there are many blocks under 18 metres. Indeed, the majority of blocks in Reading town centre of any description, whether or not they have problems, are way below that height. However, they are tall enough to make it difficult for people to escape from them if there were an emergency. What we are seeing in our area is a number of issues in blocks of that height—from Grenfell-style ACM cladding, from other types of cladding and, indeed, from other problems.

First, I ask the Minister to reassess the difficulties facing residents living in blocks of under 18 metres. They are being offered a loan, which, as my hon. Friend said, is some assistance, but many of these residents do not have large financial resources, so this is still a very significant imposition on them, and it may take them many years to pay off the loan. They are in this position through no fault of their own, undergoing a huge amount of stress and a great deal of anxiety because of the cladding and other issues in their blocks. As my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out, many are people who would like to sell, but are unable to do so because they cannot get the right certification.

Secondly, in my experience, this issue goes beyond the very serious one of cladding into a range of other fire safety and building quality issues. There are what appear to be from the outside some beautiful blocks in Reading, next to the River Kennet. There is one with a beautiful white exterior and a modernist appearance. However, the sad reality for its residents is that the compartmentalisation of that building is not up to standard, and if there were a fire, it would be extremely dangerous for them. Therefore, we are seeing issues with compartmentalisation and proper quality of firewalls, whether it is in the original building or through subsequent changes that have not been carried out as they should have been carried out. There are also serious issues with fire spread within buildings and with fire safety doors. An elderly gentleman who lives in sheltered accommodation in a suburb came to me with very serious concerns about the fire door on the front of his property in a low-rise block. He replaced it only to then be told that, because of confusion around the quality of the replacement spec needed, he had to replace it with a further one and, as a pensioner, he was faced with an enormous bill of about £2,000 for a new door. These are the kinds of things we are talking about: cladding, doors, compartmentalisation, and a range of other serious issues. I ask the Minister to look again at the challenges that we face with the large number of lower-rise blocks—he obviously knows about the dangerous fires in the two lower-rise blocks in Barking and Bolton—and at the issue of compartmentalisation and other subsequent and additional fire safety problems.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak in this debate at somewhat short notice. I do very much appreciate that and I wish him a happy St David’s Day—I am afraid that I cannot say that in Welsh. I also ask the Minister if he might be able to reply to my points.