Building Safety Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to the hot seat.

I want to highlight just one aspect of building safety that I do not believe has been covered either in the Bill or in the debate so far today. Safety on stairs might seem to be rather a niche issue compared with the many issues around fire safety that we are discussing, but it has to be more than just a case of “watch where you’re going”. As the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has discovered, falling on stairs is a significant cause of death, stretching into many hundreds per year. For every one hospital admission caused by a burn, there are 235 caused by falls.

The impact of these falls is felt disproportionately by older people, and even when a fall is not fatal, it is often the first stage of a persistent decline. Falls create fear, they impact on confidence and wellbeing, and they lead to people being moved out of their own homes and into care homes, in many cases never to return. I represent a predominantly elderly constituency and I am in no doubt about the importance of stair safety to maintaining independence in the home for as long as possible, but I am also someone with cerebral palsy, and I know that it is not just the elderly but people like me who have to be exceedingly careful when navigating staircases.

There is an existing industry standard, British standard 5395-1, regarding how stairs should be constructed, including rules on the dimensions of stairs and handrails. Stairs built to the British Standard lead to 60% fewer falls. Although it has been the standard since 2010, it has not, as yet, been enshrined in law, and is therefore often not used by builders. I have written to the building safety Minister asking for the Bill to include a mandate for the British standard to be applied in all new build homes, and I plan to propose such an amendment should he not give me sufficient satisfaction.

It is worth noting that this cause is backed by both private and social housing providers. It will create a level playing field in house building, but, more importantly, it will massively reduce the number of falls on stairs in the future, easing the burden on A&E and ambulances, and saving many families from unnecessary and premature tragedy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Meg Hillier.

Building Safety Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper]

I will speak very briefly about amendment 75 and new clauses 24 and 25, all of which stand in my name and are supported by the Local Government Association.

Amendment 75 is pretty straightforward. At present, the Bill lacks clarity in relation to social housing providers. This amendment to clause 57 would make registered social landlords exempt from the additional financial burden of the building safety levy. I think it unacceptable that council and housing association tenants have to subsidise the failures of private developers under this scheme.

The purpose of the two new clauses, taken together, is to introduce a more stringent building safety framework that would apply to multiple dwellings under 18 metres in height as well as those above. We have already heard from hon. Members about how crude the 18-metre cut-off is and how it has no basis. Indeed, many of us remember seeing a leaked video of an adviser to the Government saying that that figure had been plucked out of the air.

These two new clauses, taken together, would prevent having a two-tier building safety regime. I ask the Minister to respond to the amendment and the new clauses to see whether the Government might be willing to adopt them all during the passage of the Bill.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 17, which stands in my name.

The Minister, probably more than anybody else in this Parliament, already knows that I have a tendency to fall over. Because I am teetotal, this is not down to drink either. Indeed, I suspect that every single Member here will know someone—a friend, a loved one or a relative—who has had a fall on the stairs. They are a silent killer and claim the lives of over 700 people every year, as well as thousands more who suffer injuries and lose their independence.

Finding a solution to the issue of flammable cladding has proven fiendishly complex, as we know from our time here, but for staircase safety it should be, and indeed is, simple. A British standard already exists that reduces falls by a staggering 60%: British Standard 5395-1. It means that stairs must have a minimum size of “going”—the horizontal surface on which one treads—and a maximum rise in height limiting steepness and providing enough surface area on which to step. Provision of easy-reach handrails is also required for staircases to be compliant. While such staircases hardly look different at all to the naked eye, their impact on preventing falls is remarkable.

British Standard 5395-1 has been in place since 2010 but never enshrined in law as a requirement, so today I am proposing this new clause, alongside the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for whose support I am most grateful. This is the result of ardent campaigning by the UK’s leading accident prevention charity, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, but also, crucially, major players in the housing industry such as the Berkeley Group. Industry wants this regulation. It wants a level playing field where there is one simple rule for all to adhere to. Because I am only calling for the standard to be applied to new-builds, there will be negligible cost and no need for retrofitting.

I can almost hear what the Minister is about to tell me—that it is uncommon to use primary legislation to enshrine such a standard into law. The Government will argue that our focus should be outcome-based rather than legislating on method, but I might point to regulation 7 of the building regulations, on combustible materials, which is in itself descriptive and sets out how the industry must achieve that particular regulation. If the outcome that we are all aiming for is safety of stairs, then the status quo is simply not working, and hundreds of people are dying every year from something that could so easily be prevented: I refer back to the 60% figure. If the Government have some other way to achieve such a reduction in preventable death in the home, then I am all ears, as many people have often pointed out to me. Independent safety campaigners such as RoSPA are confident from the statistics that this simple measure will save more lives than perhaps anything else in the entire Bill.

Genuine low-hanging fruit does not come along very often in politics, and I would like the Minister to grasp it when he sees it. He may not wish to satisfy me by granting me the agreement of the Government to the new clause. He has spent many years working on this with me trying to keep me satisfied and happy, but failed. Now he has his chance to redeem himself after 12 months of horror. Will he at least agree to meet me to discuss how we can take this matter forward? He can make my day by saying, yes, the Government agree. He can give me a minute of happiness and take forward Conservative party harmony, so rare these days, just by agreeing to meet me. I look forward to hearing what he might just have to say.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Just a minute of happiness—very good.