Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I warmly welcome the Minister to her post. I had meetings with most of her predecessors. I do not need to keep having meetings; I just hope that she takes up the points we have raised.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) on laying out the issues so clearly—as a result, I have cut my speech in half. Sadly, it is a bit like “Groundhog Day”: we have all raised these issues before. The peroration of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) summarised the complexity that the Minister and the Government have to grapple with. It is not just the Government who are part of this challenge, but they have to be part of the solution.

I will not name any of the developments that I am talking about, because my residents are very concerned about being blighted. There have been some improvements. The Building Safety Regulator is getting better and the delays have reduced, but as well as dealing with historical issues, it has to work with new developments. Hackney council has a good track record of building council housing, but some of it has been delayed by the Building Safety Regulator. I understand that the delays have now reduced substantially, but I hope the Minister will look closely at that issue in her new role to make sure the Building Safety Regulator is working as efficiently as possible.

Skills remain a big issue, and there has been a woeful lack of activity. Some of us were here in 2018 talking about training fire safety engineers. It takes three years to train them, and if anyone had done that then, we would be in a much better place now.

I also wish to mention mortgageability. As recently as 3 September, I had a letter from Baroness Blake of Leeds, repeating what I have had from Ministers of different parties over time: that there are 10 mortgage companies that will lend on property with dangerous cladding. I point that out to constituents and keep referring them to the 10 companies, but there is always a reason why it cannot happen. Those companies obviously have criteria that are often not met. If the Government are routinely sending out that sort of information, it needs to be absolutely accurate.

Insurance is a huge and ongoing problem. For two developments in my constituency, only one insurer took part in the insurance tender process—insurers are just pulling out. The Treasury Committee is keen to look at that issue, but there is a real role for the Government to play. I spoke to the Minister’s predecessors in the previous Government, but this nut has not yet been cracked. I think I speak for every Member in this Chamber when I say that we would be happy to put our weight and effort behind it to help the Minister tackle the issues with insurance companies. We cannot have properties that are effectively uninsurable and bankrupting our residents. As the right hon. Member for Islington North said, people are going into debt to pay their insurance premiums, and that is before they have a claim to make.

The lack of skilled contractors was first raised back in 2020 in a Public Accounts Committee report, when I was Chair of that Committee. We asked for work to be done, but nothing has happened.

The hon. Member for Surrey Heath spoke about tolerability. I have a very expert constituent who came to my advice surgery this summer. I am very happy to introduce the Minister to him. He has written to me and the Department a number of times, and we have had a number of exchanges about the changes in British standards since Grenfell, and specifically about building materials. Instead of having set standards, fire safety is now done on measures of tolerability. He says that there is now a scale of standards, depending on the individual who does the fire safety assessment. That is why, after the Adam Kiziak affair, in which a number of EWS1—external wall system fire review—forms were forged, other people qualified to do the EWS1 certificates came to different conclusions. Two buildings in Hackney that were tolerable were then said to have issues that require remediation.

My constituent said that insurance has become so expensive because the insurers are not certain about the standards, which will no doubt have an impact on mortgage lenders, too. The issue needs to be resolved. I say with respect to the Minister that the solution must be much more fundamental than the Government getting people in, banging heads together and saying, “Sort it out.” This is fundamental to why Grenfell happened in the first place. It was the biggest public safety failure in several generations.

The Department’s permanent secretary at the time spoke to several of her predecessors to find out who could have seen it coming. Changes happened here, there and everywhere, and no one saw what the cumulative impact would be on Grenfell—obviously, there were also other shocking aspects of the Grenfell situation. This is an opportunity for the Minister, who is a very capable woman—we are all delighted to see her in her post—to tackle this issue once and for all. It may not help our residents immediately, but it has to work for the future.

I have several simple asks. Will the Minister get working on the mortgage lender issue and make sure that we are sending out accurate information? Will she work with mortgage lenders not just to get them to sign up to a list saying that they support lending but to be really clear about the criteria that will allow them to lend? Will she look again at insurance and skills, and will she please tackle the issue of tolerability?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) for securing this important debate.

I thank all hon. Members who are here this morning. Nine years on, a number of them have rightly raised the tragic incident at Grenfell Tower. As a London MP, I vividly remember the night of 14 June 2017. My son had been born a week earlier, on 7 June. Watching TV throughout the night was like watching a horror film with flames and black pieces, not knowing that the black pieces coming out of the building were people jumping. It is right that this House is united in continuing to scrutinise the pace of remediation and the support available to those affected.

Many residents across the country have lived with uncertainty about the safety of their homes, their financial security and their ability to move on with their lives. We recognise the impact that building safety can have not only on people’s homes, but on their wellbeing and peace of mind. Nine years on from Grenfell, we have to be honest and say that there can be no justification for unsafe buildings remaining unaddressed. Although significant progress has been made, more than 4,000 buildings have been identified as requiring remediation, and too many residents continue to face the consequences of failures that they did not cause.

That is why this Government are committed to speeding up remediation, ensuring that those responsible bear the cost of making buildings safer, and strengthening protections for leaseholders and residents. Our objective is clear: to remove barriers to remediation, speed up delivery and ensure that people can feel safe and secure in their home. Since the launch of the remediation acceleration plan, more than 420 additional buildings over 11 metres have completed cladding remediation through the Government-funded scheme and the developer remediation contract, meaning that some 35,000 more residents are now living in safer homes. The Government have approved £2.1 billion of funding for cladding remediation since the plan was launched and have committed to more than £1 billion to accelerate remediation in the social housing sector.

But we recognise that further action is needed. We are considering how we can go further to protect residents, particularly those who fall outside existing protections, and to ensure that no responsible party can avoid its obligations. That is why we will build on the foundations established by the Building Safety Act through the forthcoming remediation Bill and our wider programme of building safety reforms.

The Bill will provide greater clarity and certainty about which buildings require remediation and the standards that must be met. It will strengthen regulators’ ability to check delay and non-compliance. It will improve routes to recover remediation costs from those responsible and ensure that residents have a pathway to remediation even where responsible entities fail to act or are unable to meet their obligations. Taken together, these reforms will strengthen accountability across the system and help to ensure that buildings are made safer faster.

I turn to some specific issues raised during the debate. The hon. Members for Surrey Heath and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) raised the issue of PAS 9980. As hon. Members will know, PAS 9980 was developed by the British Standards Institution. The Government sponsored the BSI to review and update it to ensure that it remains fit for purpose and captures best practice, looking at the learnings since it was introduced in 2022.

As the hon. Member for Surrey Heath outlined, the BSI published an update to PAS 9980 yesterday. I do not agree with the hon. Member’s characterisation. PAS 9980 provides an industry-wide accepted methodology to enable qualified and experienced assessors to undertake the fire risk appraisal of external walls. It provides a consistent and proportionate building-specific approach to risk assessments and helps to achieve the right solutions for each building, keeping residents safe while preventing unnecessary and disruptive works. As the update highlights, it has improved the clarity of the structure and usability of PAS 9980, with the aim of achieving greater transparency and consistency by assessors. It does not, however, materially change how risks are assessed, so fire risk appraisals of external walls undertaken using a previous version of PAS 9980 will remain valid. Government remediation programmes require that fire risk appraisals of external walls be undertaken using this methodology.

To further safeguard quality and ensure consistency in assessments, the remediation Bill will mandate how external wall assessments are carried out, to align with our best practice remediation programmes and ensure a nationally consistent approach to remediation work. It will also establish mandatory auditing of fire risk appraisals of external walls in law. This requirement will reinforce trust in both the assessors and the outcomes. I hope that that helps to reassure hon. Members.

Several right hon. and hon. Members rightly mentioned the issue of fire risk assessors. Fire risk assessors perform a critical safety role, and it is essential that they are fully compliant and competent. We have therefore accepted the full recommendation in the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report for mandatory certifications of fire risk assessors. To meet the recommendation, we intend to bring into law mandatory compliance requirements for fire risk assessors to perform that vital role, subject to parliamentary approval and timescale.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I welcome that step, but what the Minister says suggests it is some way off. Can she give some indication of the timescale for getting mandatory licensing in place?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I agree that many people will continue to question when the fire risk assessors will be in place. The Government recently launched a public consultation on the proposal to establish a fire risk assessor profession with consistently high levels of competency, whereby trust is rebuilt and a strong and diverse pipeline of talent comes forward to ensure that fire safety standards are met. We are currently analysing all the consultation responses, and the Government will publish a full response later this autumn, so hopefully my hon. Friend will not have to wait much longer.

We recognise the additional pressures on building control and fire engineer capacity across the country. We have established the independent building control panel and the fire engineers advisory panel to examine the issues and provide recommendations on strengthening the system. The Government are committed to working with the BSR on long-term reform and exploring options for a more efficient building control system. Any future changes will be developed in consultation with the industry and other stakeholders.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

We all want to see stronger and better building control, but local authorities have been hollowed out. We have lost a lot of experienced planners and there is not always a pipeline coming through with the necessary experience. Can we lobby the Treasury for support for local government in that respect?

[Florence Eshalomi]

My hon. Friend will know that I will definitely continue to lobby Treasury colleagues very hard, and any help from colleagues around the House will be helpful. In the meantime, the current system includes a new initiative looking at digital building control programmes. I can confirm that over £45 million has been invested in growing the workforce to help to address the key issue of capacity, streamline the process and support development. More is coming, but a lot more needs to come through the pipeline.

A number of Members, including the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, mentioned the key issue of building insurance and the continuing financial strain felt by so many innocent leaseholders. They see their insurance premiums going through the roof, in some cases paying more than for their mortgages. In the remediation acceleration plan, the Government have committed to working with the insurance industry to explore options to address the insurance challenges faced by residents living in buildings that are undergoing remediation.

To strengthen the evidence base, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government launched the remediation programme insurance survey, a UK-wide survey of buildings in Government remediation programmes. The findings, first published in July 2026, provide the most comprehensive dataset collected to date on insurance costs, premiums and claims and remediation status across more than 2,000 buildings undergoing remediation. The evidence is informing ongoing engagement with insurers and wider work to understand how insurance costs can better reflect improvements in building safety as remediation progresses. The Financial Conduct Authority is undertaking a short and focused review of the multi-occupancy building insurance market, and the findings will strengthen the evidence base on the next steps.

The Government are also undertaking action to improve transparency and fairness in residential building insurance. We are proceeding with secondary legislation to prevent insurance commissions, which can be opaque and excessive, from being passed on by freeholders and managing agents as freeholders’ expenses, and to replace such arrangements with fair and transparent permitted insurance payments with a fee structure. Alongside that, we will introduce through secondary legislation a new transparency requirement for building insurance, including in respect of the disclosure of the relationships and financial arrangements among landlords, managing agents, brokers and insurers.