Building Safety

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady can see that we are doing a root-and-branch reform of the building safety system, both in the interim and in the long term with the building safety Bill that will come forward as soon as possible. I am working very closely with local authorities, and today of course I have announced £14 million of additional funding that will help to support them to use their existing powers robustly.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is almost 12 years since the tragedy in Atherstone on Stour, in Warwickshire, which resulted in the deaths of four firefighters. Sprinklers were subsequently introduced into legislation. Can the Secretary of State not be more ambitious and ensure that sprinklers are retrofitted to all tower blocks and also insist that they be introduced into schools, so that we do not lose schools, as we did in Scotland the other week?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I think I said earlier, we will always be guided by the safety of residents, but we must be led by the evidence, and the consultation I am launching today will do exactly that. We will consider the appropriate threshold and whether measures need to be applied to other high-risk buildings of different types.