Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (First sitting)

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Q Lord Roe, you have answered a few questions that I had about the balance of regulation and delivering on applications that are for high-rise flats but are not about cladding—they are about windows, for example, in my constituency. So my question is to Helen Fisher. What are your views on the Bill and specifically on independent scrutiny?

I have in my constituency a case that I think is a useful test case for the Bill. Barratt Redrow built a building; cladding was an issue but, in looking at that, all sorts of other issues about the whole structure of the building were uncovered. My constituents have been decanted for three years and they are asked to go back next week on the basis of a report by the developers, Barratt Redrow, who in their mind caused all those problems. My constituents want independent scrutiny of that. They want independently to know that, for example, the concrete that it has been made with, which is in question, is the right one. Are they safe to go back? Does the Bill allow for that? Where do residents go when they are being asked to return, or during a process of remediation, for that independent aspect of it? Do you think that is strong enough, or could more be done about the quality and consistency of assessments?

Helen Fisher: I will start with the same message that you heard from the other panel members: Homes England supports the introduction of more tools to ensure that there are things that can be done against those who are not doing what needs to be done.

In response to the question about independent scrutiny, the Bill is introducing tools to ensure that fire risk appraisals of the external wall are put on to a level where they will all have independent peer review. Our experience in Homes England is that when we put the cladding safety scheme together, we listened to residents and leaseholders; we worked extensively with End Our Cladding Scandal and others, and the message—this is the question that you are asking—came out very clearly from them that, over the decade since Grenfell, trust has broken down significantly between developers, building owners and managing agents. We placed the design of that programme significantly in the middle of that to make sure that any independent investigation that had been done by any party was brought into Homes England and put through panel engagement that was independently qualified in order to peer-review, challenge and ensure.

There are policy aspects that are difficult, such as proportionality; PAS 9980 itself has subjectivity to it, and we know, with our engineers and our panels, that there is a degree of growth there over the last two or three years in the programme. Scrutiny exists in the cladding safety scheme. I think we need to bottle that, and this Bill moves towards that—making sure of independent auditing of key investigation documents, such as a fire risk appraisal of an external wall, is having that form of scrutiny.

That is crucial for residents and leaseholders, so that they can have confidence in the documentation that is delivered by individuals and they do not have to concern themselves about who the original instructor of the documents is—whether it is a developer, a freeholder or a right-to-manage company. We have dealt with both ends of that spectrum from betterment and wanting the work to go further than expected, to the other end, where the position is trying to do the least amount of work as is tolerable.

I have a slightly different problem from Andy and Charlie, as we deal with this at every height. The Building Safety Regulator covers buildings of 18 metres-plus, and then there are high-rise buildings. The majority of 11 to 18-metre buildings now coming through are right-to-manage or small entities, so there is a need for us to operationally adapt to that to ensure we are giving support and helping with independent scrutiny, not just to ensure we hold the market to account, but to ensure support for right-to-manage companies so that they can take independent audit as assurance that that work is right for them.

Lord Roe: Could I just add something to provide a bit of assurance, since I imagine that some of your constituents will be watching? Obviously, if an HRB is above the threshold of 18 metres, it will come through our gateway process, which I know is onerous, but is onerous for a reason. We are going to look at the dead load of the façade engineering. We then look at it in the in-build phase as well, so we are going to get eyes on what they are doing—it is like building your extension—and then we sign it off. That is the point of enhanced building control, but it carries some complexity and it takes time.

On the flipside, although it does not solve some of the other problems around the split between internal and external defects, every high-rise building requires a building assessment certificate. That has been in law since 2024. Again, it was not communicated properly when the regulator was set up—we are not going to defend that—but we have done an enormous amount of communication since to educate and put guidance out there. That will mean that it has to come into our system on the basis of an assessment. We will look at the quality of that assessment in determining whether the evidence coming to us is accurate.

The safeguards are there in the legislation. The problem is that if you are living in one of these blocks, it is complex, it is long, it can be costly and there is a shortage of the specialists you need to deal with stuff. It is mind-blowing for professionals in the space who have been doing it for years—you do not have a hope as a resident management company director. I have the utmost sympathy for them.

The challenge to us is less about the Bill. I give credit to Helen; we see each other weekly and meet the campaign groups together. We are trying to get intelligence to improve across our shared systems. It is all about our operational improvement at the other end to bring internal and external defects together. Even if the funding does not match, can we do better inside our organisation to put it in the same team, so that you look at the building at one time? We are not there yet. We are on a pretty radical journey of transformation inside the regulator. A lot of stuff is a lot better, but there is more to do.

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q I want to ask about part 3 and the ownership of buildings. Many buildings in my constituency have complex ownership structures, some of which involve companies or individuals who do not live or operate mainly in the UK. I do not know who is best placed to answer this, but does part 3 address the foreign ownership of property sufficiently?

Mark Norris: Shall I go first and have a quick stab at that? As you know, there are complex problems with finding out and addressing ownership of buildings. As Lord Roe said, there are bad actors who deliberately try to obfuscate ownership to make it more difficult for people to enforce against them. Certainly, the experience that local authorities have had when using the Housing Act 1988 is that that is a problem.

The provisions in the Bill are at least trying to move us into a position where it is harder for people to hide behind legal entities and not take responsibility for what they should be doing. That is a stronger provision that enables regulators to take action to identify who the right people are. It is really helpful. Will it entirely solve every single problem? No, it probably will not. There will continue to be bad actors who do the best they can to hide behind something, but this is a good step in the right direction and gives us additional tools to take the action that we want to take against the people who really are responsible.

Lord Roe: May I add one thing? It goes back to Gareth Bacon’s question, which is a good question, about the hierarchy of regulation. An extension of that is, “Who do you enforce against?”, in terms of what Mark said. It is important for regulators to talk to each other about hierarchy, who owns it and what you are going to do in the detail across different bits of legislation, but you need to make sure you are not enforcing against people who do not hold power in the system, particularly the resident management companies. There might be some rogue RMCs out there where you might need to do it, but I have not yet come across that situation.

I need people out there to hear that, certainly from our perspective, this measure would be a tool of absolute last resort against those entities, because most often they do not have the power even to resolve their own issues. I want to be really clear about that, because I know there is a heightened level of anxiety about what the Bill might do to those people, as if we are being forced as regulators into doing things to RMCs. We are not. We have choices as regulators. This is a great tool for some of the people you identify. Personally, I do not think it is designed to punch down at RMCs. I think it would be completely inappropriate. We would do everything else in our power to help resolve the situation with them before you got anywhere close to this.

[The Chair]

We have less than five minutes left, so I am afraid some colleagues will be disappointed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Noah Law]

Q I have a couple of brief follow-ups for you, Dan, on the last two questions. First, would some level of independent review or auditing of FRAEWs go some way towards addressing some of the concerns you raised about standards? Secondly, you made the point about stretch targets of 12 months on timing. Would you consider the duty to co-operate a stretch target, or a useful one, in ensuring co-operation between enforcement stakeholders?

Dan Daly: I will pick up on your last question and then hand over to my colleague on the independent auditing, because we have been talking about that. We already have a duty to collaborate, so that is not new, but providing some clarity around how regulators and agencies will work together in a consistent way that is applied nationally will improve it. I am not sure that it offers us individually anything more than we currently have, but across the wider sector, that duty to collaborate is not unhelpful.

Penny Pender: The point in the Bill about solidifying independent auditing is crucial, and I agree with everything that Helen on the previous panel said. That is a really welcome part of the Bill, and it will hopefully assist in these cases. If I may speak to the concern that Mr Blackman mentioned, just because something has planning permission does not mean that it meets the functional requirements of the building regulations. If those buildings went up with combustible cladding on them, they do not meet the building regulations, full stop. Hopefully there are sufficient powers across the built environment to deal with that, and we would hope to see the Building Safety Regulator and others step in where needed.

There might be room for examining the implementation dates for the Bill, because there are some possible gaps. The Bill will only apply, I think, to buildings that were built before April ’22. There are some periods of time there, such as the possible 15-month gap between when the Building Safety Act came into force and when gateway 2 started, that might bear examination and would be good to look into. There was also an eight-month gap between the Bill coming into force and the review of the combustible cladding ban.

You might recall that there was a combustible cladding ban put in place for buildings over 18 metres; that was reviewed and it was clarified that it would apply from 11 metres, but there was an eight-month gap during which it might have been incorrectly perceived by some in industry—even though we would disagree—that it was acceptable to put combustible material on to those buildings. Even though we would say ultimately that it still does not meet the functional requirements, some may have misunderstood that, so it would be worth examining the timeframes in the Bill to make sure that that is okay.

[Rachel Blake]

Q Building on the previous questions, I want to ask about part 4 and the duty to co-operate. My first question is: do you think that the system is prepared to meet the timeline set out in clause 75—the Building Safety Regulator preparing a statement within eight months, within which it has to consult the other organisations? Do you think the whole system is prepared to deliver on that timescale?

Penny Pender: That is a good question. I would suggest that it is possibly not necessary. There is already a lead regulator’s protocol in existence. It is known as the LACORS guidance, produced by local authority co-ordinators of regulatory services. All authorities would have had local agreements in place aligning to that at some point. The challenge is that it was not kept up to date, particularly following the implementation of the Building Safety Act.

We have been advocating for it to be updated since then. That could be achieved without waiting for primary legislation, and it would be helpful if it was done once and done nationally, and then local regulators were given the option to adopt it or to develop their own ones if they felt that was necessary. As Spencer said, London has done a lot of the heavy lifting already with the pan-London fire safety protocol, so that could easily be lifted and shifted and adopted nationally.

As Dan said, the impact assessment identifies that outside of mayoral arrangements, there could be anywhere up to 157 local partnership agreements that would have to be developed and signed off within only a four-month time period. Our concern is that that could distract from local enforcement on the ground, because in some of the smaller authorities, the staff who are needed for enforcement would have to be diverted towards developing the agreements or writing to the Secretary of State to justify why they have not. We think it should be done nationally and done once.

[Rachel Blake]

Q Would it be sensible for all the different agencies to start thinking about that statement now? Would you advise them to tune in and follow the Bill going through Committee so they can get a bit ahead?

Penny Pender: Yes, absolutely. I am sure they will be. We will be encouraging our members to do exactly that.

Dan Daly: With everyone tuning in independently, though, there is a risk of inconsistency, so some central co-ordination would bring the consistency we are looking for.

[Rachel Blake]

Q That is really helpful. We all want to see agencies co-ordinating more effectively, and partnership working agreements sound really nice, but what happens when the different agencies are not playing ball? Are there provisions in the Bill about enforcement and who holds the ring? Where is the dispute mechanism, as you see it?

Penny Pender: One of the benefits of those types of protocols is that they identify the local working arrangements when there is a need for escalation, so it would be dealt with within the scope of those.

[Rachel Blake]

Q Can you confirm which part of the partnership working agreement does that? Is it sending a copy to the Secretary of State? Does that mean that the Secretary of State is essentially put in the position of having to mediate if a partnership working agreement is not working? I am trying to get to what happens when agencies cannot agree.

Dan Daly: We have been saying collectively that what is in here at the minute does not do the work that we would like it to do. We would like that national co-ordination, and within that agreement, for there to be sign-up from partners on who owns the lead in certain circumstances, so it should not require someone to step in and mediate.

Without that agreement, there is more risk of delay as people debate inconsistently through local agreements, or you have a stand-off between agencies because there is no agreement in place. We can tackle that by moving the national agreement forward more quickly to remove the doubt and maybe answer the questions you are asking.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Q One of the key issues we found was with residential personal emergency evacuation plans. We intend to legislate to mandate them, taking into account fires and people with additional disabilities. What difference do you think assessing the inside of a resident’s own home beforehand would make to the effectiveness of a personal evacuation plan?

Spencer Sutcliff: Naturally, we are very supportive of RPEEPs and personal evacuation plans. However, our preference would be for the measure to go further and look at fire risk within homes, rather than just being focused on the escape routes.

Dan Daly: I think there are other benefits, one of which is about providing extra assurance on the plans that have been put in place. We know that fires start inside individual dwellings; they rarely start in the common parts of a building. There is also an opportunity to ensure the maintenance of some of the passive fire safety protection that is designed within a building—whether that is where people have access to common service risers, or where they have made adaptions to fire doors and things inside those properties. That is part of the building integrity overall.