Building Safety

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Let me start by thanking the Minister for advance sight of the statement. I must be clear that I do not share his enthusiasm that the end of the building safety crisis is somehow near, and neither do campaigners up and down the country, including End Our Cladding Scandal. Just last week, new Government figures, to which the Minister referred, showed that only 21% of high-rise blocks have been fully—I stress, fully—remediated. We are now nearly seven years on from the Grenfell fire, the tragedy where 72 people lost their lives, yet hundreds of thousands of families and individuals are stuck in flats with dangerous, flammable defects, whether cladding, missing fire breaks or wooden balconies. The toxicity of this crisis goes on and on.

Everybody deserves to feel safe in their own home. Despite years of reactive policies from the Government, and now billions of pounds committed through a plethora of funds to fix unsafe homes, progress remains painfully slow for far too many. All of that means that far too many people are living in fear of their lives every day. What those families need is action now to speed up remediation and to hold all those responsible for the building safety crisis to account. Action is needed for all those trapped in unsafe buildings facing eye-watering bills, whether for the black hole of service charges or for insurance premiums. They simply have no control over their future. Action is needed to let the residents of these buildings finally turn the page.

I am disappointed that today’s statement is not much more than a rehashing of statistics and data points that were put in the public domain last Thursday. I am particularly disappointed that it does not include the second staircase guidance, which is desperately needed. The Minister will know that the absence of that guidance has held up the construction of thousands of safe homes across the country. In London alone, the Mayor has said that the botched implementation has stopped at least 38,000 homes from being built. During the delay, key design details have been missing, and both house builders and local authorities have been left in limbo. What is more, some sites have completely ground to a halt. What exactly is taking so long? How many buildings nationwide does the Minister estimate have been held up? It would be useful if the Minister could provide an update on the position on personal emergency evacuation plans, which many campaigners continue to push.

Moving onto the specifics of today’s announcement, I welcome the new initiatives to boost enforcement, but they would more effective if they were part of a broader strategy instead of being reactive, piecemeal announcements. The initiatives are just a drop in the ocean of what is needed. While I welcome the support for council enforcement teams, the Minister and the Government simply cannot pass the buck. The Department needs to play a more active and robust role. I welcome the new regulatory protocol for greater consistency, but I would like to see the details and a timeframe. The Minister rightfully calls out some owners and developers, but will he also call out the manufacturers and make all those responsible for the building safety crisis pay?

Finally, I want to mention the scale of the problem with insurance premiums, which the Minister will have seen reported in The Independent earlier this week. It is constantly raised with me and I know it is raised with the Minister, too. He will be aware of allegations of profiteering and the many thousands of pounds being paid in premiums, in some cases going up by 1,000%, even when buildings have been remediated and made safe. He previously mentioned pooling schemes. The industry has put forward its own scheme, which will go live on 1 April. Residents and campaigners are not convinced that it will bring premiums down, so I would like an update from the Minister today.

The Minister will not need reminding that today’s announcement is just one cog that needs to be turned to solve the building safety crisis. I look forward to working constructively with him to do the right thing for the hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in the building safety crisis. I look forward to the Minister’s response.