Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I will keep my remarks brief. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—as has just been said, he speaks with enormous authority on this matter and the Government should listen.

Like many of our cities, Sheffield has seen a huge growth in high-rise developments in recent years. They are largely privately owned developments, and many are for students. I am grateful that my hon. Friend highlighted the need to include purpose-built student accommodation in the requirements for sprinklers. Many of the developments are for other purposes—mainly for rent, although some are for owner-occupation. There are complex ownership arrangements between developers and the owners of the freehold, and there are complex leasehold and management agreements. The people who live in them look to the local authority to guarantee their safety, and it is a responsibility that Sheffield City Council is keen to respond to. It acted unilaterally, without financial support, to retrofit sprinklers in its own properties after the Grenfell disaster, and it wants to go further on private sector properties.

When the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to local authority chief executives in March 2018 to say it was

“vitally important that we identify any remaining private high rise blocks with potentially unsafe ACM cladding”

and to offer funding, the council was quick to respond. It put together a plan to compile a comprehensive register of all high-rise accommodation, set out ownership and management details, provide information on construction and materials used, and undertake a risk assessment and outline what was needed to make the property safe, including sprinkler systems. It would have cost just £740,000 over two years, but the Government offered just 5% of that cost from the money that had been set aside. Recognising that councils have faced disproportionate cuts—Sheffield has lost around 60% of its funding from central Government—does the Minister think that providing only 5% support for that work was adequate?

Sprinklers are key to saving lives when fires start, but we need to remove the risk of them starting in the first place. The Minister will be aware of the formation of the UK Cladding Action Group to voice the concerns of people who own flats in tower blocks with ACM cladding. It was reported in the last couple of days that only 10 of the 173 private buildings that were discovered to have combustible cladding have been fixed—this point was raised by the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) a moment ago. The barrier to action appears to be disputes over the funding and responsibility for the work.

Among the blocks affected is Metis Tower in my constituency. Residents there face a bleak future. One of those who contacted me, William Martin, summed up his situation in a plea to the Secretary of State:

“I’m a first time buyer stuck with a property covered in failed cladding. The freeholder is denying responsibility and the developers have ceased trading. I’m currently living out a nightmare and facing financial ruin. I and many others desperately need your help.”

A company called HomeGround represents the freeholder, Adriatic, and says that it is not the landlord and is therefore not responsible. It points fingers at the property management company, Fairways, which says that it is awaiting legal clarification on who is responsible. The suggestion is that the responsibility for the re-cladding will fall on those who own the flats, who face individual bills of upwards of £20,000 each. That is a disgrace—the residents cannot afford those sums. William says that he cannot get rid of the property or move on when he wants to, and that frankly, he feels trapped in a prison. That is not acceptable. If someone buys a dishwasher that is found to be faulty because of a fire risk, we put safety first: the product is recalled and the manufacturer takes responsibility. If that is good enough for domestic products, why is it not good enough for the homes that house them?

I recognise that some developers and freeholders accept responsibility, but others do not. The Government must act. We need first to make the building safe, and we need to make sure that the individual residents who own the flats do not foot the bill. The Government should hold the developers and freeholders to account. If the law is not currently up to the task, we need to change it. I hope that the Minister will outline what action the Government will take in that respect.