Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation

Debate between Meg Hillier and Florence Eshalomi

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Florence Eshalomi

Report stage
Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I rise to speak to Government new clause 44 and new schedule 2. These provisions give powers to the Mayor of London to establish a pilot to set up a strategic licensing policy statement, which would cover sections 4 and 5 of the Licensing Act 2003. In summary, that is the sale by retail of alcohol, a licence for the “provision of regulated entertainment” under schedule 1 of the 2003 Act, and

“The provision of late night refreshment licences”—

within the meaning of schedule 2 of the 2003 Act.

I am proud to represent a borough that has some of the best licensed premises in the country. In Shoreditch, Dalston and elsewhere, we have some of the best restaurants in the world. I visited Counter 71 in Shoreditch a little while ago, and they told me how they had hit social media in Japan, which had led to a lot of visitors. If the Minister ever wants to do any outreach on licensing, she is welcome to come to my borough, where she will get the best of the best. But there are also people who chance it and try it on, so it is important that we have licensing rules that local authorities can enforce properly—and that they have the money to do so.

In Hackney, the hospitality industry is a growth area, boosting the economy in the way that the Chancellor wants to see. It is also facing pressures, as all Members will know from their own constituencies. There is a well-worn route on licensing in Hackney that is well understood. We need to support the licensing process, and ensure that there are fees available to cover the costs, while also supporting businesses and ensuring that they can do this with relative ease when they play by the rules—and if they do not play by the rules, ensure that enforcement kicks in.

It is important to lie this Bill alongside the joint industry and Government taskforce, which reported to the Department for Business and Trade on, I think, 6 November. That taskforce and its report plays into some of the proposals that are outlined in the Bill. Some of the concerns that we have in Hackney—I know other inner-London MPs share some of these—are around the potential impacts on pavement licences, which are important to support businesses that want to grow.

In covid, when there was a proposal to rapidly increase pavement licences—later solidified by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023—we learnt that there could be real issues without the proper involvement of the community, police and licensing authorities. In that case, it was a rushed process—28 days—to change the rules in the Highways Act 1980 to allow licences to the same level as were provided for internal spaces. It was an unholy alliance of inner-London MPs that managed to eventually get that ameliorated in the Lords. That legislation was done at pace during covid; we have more time to think about it now. But new clause 22 and new schedule 2 have both been tabled at quite late notice.

The length of licences is also an issue, because if licences are allowed to run on too long it can be very complicated to rescind them—it can take 12 months. Although a licence that needs a regular fee, which can be rolled over relatively easily, is a cost on the business, overall, it can be a low fee if the business behaves well. There are measures that many boroughs have introduced to ensure that those that play by the rules are treated fairly.

Although not directly related to the Bill, fees could be part of the wider debate on licensing. Some fees are very low. Temporary events notices, for example, are still £21 each; that would be £37 if they had been uprated. That is still low—barely an hour of an officer’s time. There are examples in Hackney of some licensed premises regularly putting in for temporary events notices.

[Florence Eshalomi]

On the losses to the council, does my hon. Friend recognise that for many councils the costs of additional street cleaning, refuse collection, signage and lighting all add up when an event is granted a temporary licence, and for many councils there is no compensation for that?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely understand and support the Government’s approach to supporting businesses, but good businesses are not supported if the fees for temporary events notices and other licences do not keep up with inflation. Where there is a flood of temporary events notices for extended hours by some businesses, it causes a huge burden on the local authority, for which it is not funded. In fact, in Hackney there is an annual deficit of around £16,000 on temporary events notices alone.

We need enough fees for enforcement while not overburdening business—we have to get that balance right. The best businesses will understand the costs of enforcement, refuse collection and the other issues related to areas with large numbers of licensed premises, and will see the importance of that balance being in place.

Children in Temporary Accommodation: England

Debate between Meg Hillier and Florence Eshalomi

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee publishes our first report of the Session, following our inquiry on children in temporary accommodation. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for kindly granting time for this statement, and the Committee’s staff for their assistance in producing the report.

This morning, over 164,000 children woke up without a permanent roof over their head. Their parents were unable to sleep, worrying about making the long journey to work and school, about the state of their accommodation, and about when they will finally get a home of their own. Given that the number of children in temporary accommodation rose by 15% in the last year alone, we know that there will not be an overnight fix to this problem. That is why our Committee’s first inquiry of this Parliament focused on the stories of children in temporary accommodation, and the impact that the increasing amount of time families are spending in what should be temporary accommodation is having on those children. How can we expect children to have the best start in life when they are living out of suitcases? How can we expect them to grow up without the basics of a private bathroom or kitchen, and how can we expect them to be ready for school if it takes them hours to get there, on a route that is always changing?

When a family with children become homeless, their local authority has a duty to provide housing for them until they can settle in a more permanent home. This temporary housing could be a privately rented property, short-term social housing, a council-owned property or nightly paid accommodation, such as a bed and breakfast or a hotel. Our inquiry found that far too often, temporary accommodation is completely inappropriate for families, and in some cases is unfit for habitation. We heard about cases of families living in accommodation that is excessively cold, that has serious damp and mould, and that has mice infestations. Temporary accommodation is often overcrowded; sometimes older children have to share beds with their parents or siblings, and babies cannot crawl or learn to walk due to a lack of floor space.

However, that accommodation is costing the public purse a fortune. In 2023-24, local authorities in England spent around £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation, and London boroughs alone spend £4 million a day on temporary accommodation. The cost of homelessness services has led to at least one local authority applying for exceptional financial support from the Government. Representatives of local authorities across England who we heard from during our inquiry all agreed that the cost of temporary accommodation is utterly unsustainable. Even the term “temporary accommodation” is misleading, because these placements are often far from temporary. As of March 2024, more than 16,000 families had been in their temporary accommodation for over five years. Can any of us imagine starting secondary school, in year 7, in temporary accommodation, and still not having a home of our own when we leave in year 11? That is the reality for so many young people in so many families—young people who are often voiceless, out of sight, and stuck in completely unsuitable accommodation.

Our report is therefore entitled “England’s Homeless Children: the crisis in temporary accommodation”. It was apparent to us that we have not only a housing crisis in England, but an acute crisis in temporary accommodation. During our inquiry, we heard about conditions so appalling that they are having a negative impact on children’s health. We heard that housing conditions are contributing to respiratory illness, sleep deprivation and mental health conditions in children. Most shockingly, we heard that temporary accommodation has been a contributing factor to the deaths of at least 74 children in the past five years. Of those children, 58 were under the age of one. In one of the richest countries in the world, that is shameful. That alone should inspire us all to act urgently and bring an end to this crisis before more innocent lives are lost.

Why, then, are local authorities not required to inspect the quality of their temporary accommodation at all? There is no requirement for local housing departments to carry out in-person checks on the properties being used. Our report recommends that local authorities carry out mandatory inspections of housing before it is used as temporary accommodation, as well as whenever new residents are placed in that housing, to ensure its basic suitability for children and families. Perhaps the worst form of temporary accommodation is bed and breakfast accommodation. B&Bs are rarely self-contained, meaning that families must share facilities with complete strangers. We heard about alarming cases of prison leavers sharing bathrooms and kitchens with families, and heard evidence that families had been placed in housing with men with a history of domestic abuse. Local authorities must work with the Government to put an end to those mixed placements in order to mitigate the clear safeguarding risks.

In some areas, demand pressures have forced local authorities to place homeless children in temporary accommodation outside the area. Families are often left with no choice but to move away from everybody and everything they know, including their friends and support networks, sometimes not knowing when or if they will return. For children, an out-of-area placement can mean hours spent travelling to and from school, or needing to move schools entirely. Just last week, new research from the Children’s Commissioner highlighted a stark link between the number of times a child in temporary accommodation moves school and low GCSE results. Only 38% of children who moved homes five times while at school achieved five GCSEs, compared with 65% of children who had only one home address. While we were not able to consider this latest evidence in our inquiry, those findings demonstrate the point that we need to keep improving data collection and reporting across public services, so that we can fully understand the health and education impacts of child homelessness.

We also recommend that the Government establish a formalised notification system, so that a child’s school and GP are alerted when they become homeless. The Government have set up an inter-ministerial group, which will publish a strategy on ending homelessness later this year. While we welcome that announcement, we recommend that the inter-ministerial group considers the link between welfare reforms—particularly the re-freezing of the local housing allowance—and homelessness.

Fundamentally, England’s housing crisis is an affordability crisis, and the same can be said about the temporary accommodation crisis. We know what has caused this problem: there has been a failure of successive Governments over decades to deliver new homes. The Committee supports the Government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, but we also stand ready to help scrutinise those plans as they come forward. We must ensure that these new homes are safe, of high quality and are genuinely affordable. A long-term part of that strategy is a national target to promote social or affordable rent homes in the housing mix. Clearly, building those homes is the long-term objective, but the 164,000 children in temporary accommodation, and their families, cannot wait. They need an immediate response from the Government.

This is personal for me. I still remember being placed in temporary accommodation at a bed and breakfast in King’s Cross. I remember the joy and the relief of receiving our home and the keys. It was somewhere we could build a home and not have to carry belongings around in a black bag. Sadly, those 164,000 children in temporary accommodation will have to wait years for that same feeling, and they will continue to suffer under an unacceptable system for too long.

I thank my fellow Committee members, and the many homeless organisations, local authorities and others who presented evidence to our Committee during this inquiry. We look forward to receiving the Government’s response, and I commend the report to the House.

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

I commend my hon. Friend not just on this report, but on her strong leadership of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. In the report, the Committee describe the very real lives of the 3,770 children from my borough who are in temporary accommodation. That is enough to fill eight primary schools. There are other impacts, too. She talked about what the Government are doing, and the report mentions the report that is expected in July. Can she give the House any indication of when that report will come, and what will her Committee do to follow up on it?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my fellow Chair, the Chair of the Treasury Committee. This is really important. As we said, we welcome the Government’s inter-ministerial group, which meets regularly to consider key findings. It is vital that it works to end homelessness across the UK. We are pushing the Government to bring forward their strategy before the summer recess; it is vital that local authorities, charities and organisations can plan before the summer holiday, when, sadly, more children will be shunted from one borough to another if we do not get to grips with this issue.

Criminal Justice Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Florence Eshalomi

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Again, I find myself breaking out in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman.

If the sanction is too low, people will keep doing it. As with county lines, it is clear that criminal gangs are often using and exploiting vulnerable people to do their dirty work. Those vulnerable people get caught, but we do not get Mr Big. Shoplifting is becoming an epidemic in many of our areas.

[Florence Eshalomi]

One of my conversations with shop workers was about the mental health impact of being attacked and abused day in, day out. A number of them were thinking of changing profession. We might think they have support, but the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) mentioned that, in most circumstances, smaller shops have just one person in the store. Does my hon. Friend agree that their safety has to be paramount and that we need more action?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Like her, I have spoken to shopkeepers and it is heartening that they want to do a good job. They said the problem is that, after a shoplifting incident, not only do they go home with it in their head but they have to take time out to record it all. This is what one said to me, and it was really heartfelt: “It stops me doing what I’m here to do, which is to help customers.” He was so proud of his job, and he wanted to help customers. Nobody should be forced not to do their job well. Frankly, there is a real issue here, and there needs to be a strong signal that there will be action on the ground, with the police working with the retailers. The big retailers can help, but action needs to be area-wide. We need to take a completely different approach to shoplifting.

I commend the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall on knife crime. She highlighted the utter tragedy that she and I have experienced too often. It is not right that our young people feel unsafe roaming the streets. They should have the right to roam, but instead they and their parents are constantly worrying about knives on the streets.

Just banning zombie knives is not enough, because people will hide them. As with county lines, people will find a way. An 11-year-old in my constituency was recently asked to hide a gun, and when the gun went missing—it was taken from him—he had to pay back the person who had asked him to look after it. That is a classic example of grooming, and the same thing will happen with knives, which are not always held by the criminals themselves. Those who want to get hold of a dangerous weapon can do so all too easily, even if it is banned in law. That alone is not enough for somebody who is determined to do this.

We need to take a much more holistic public health approach to knife crime. I was in the Home Office when my party was last in government. The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and I are proud of our service in the Home Office, which is a great Department to be in, but it is also frustrating. At that time, we were trying to work with accident and emergency departments to get the data so that we could track what was happening, to make sure we had a more holistic approach. This is not just a crime issue; it is about making sure we are helping and diverting young people, who are often drawn into this activity not because they want to be but because, for young people living in certain areas, it is safer to be part of a gang than to step away. It is hard to resist that pressure at times, and those innocent young victims need as much support as other victims.