Building Safety Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Marie Rimmer

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Rimmer]

Q The draft Bill is largely a framework Bill, sometimes referred to as an enabling Bill, which provides for key parts of the new regulatory regime to be established by delegated legislation and building regulations. Do you find that acceptable? Is enough tied down to get the secondary legislation done quickly enough? There is no timescale—just what is “reasonable”. Is that acceptable, or do you have any concerns?

Councillor McCoy: We have some concerns. You are right that timeliness is key. It reflects the points that I made earlier about having time for industry to gear up. There needs to be a proper, informed transition period. That is London Councils’ view. There needs to be a transition period that allows time for the capacity to be built. It needs to be fully funded, and there needs to be prioritisation within it. Obviously, we are very keen to see the safety measures implemented as soon as possible, but there needs to be a prioritisation of high-risk buildings in the meantime. That goes back to a holistic assessment of those buildings. We think that we need a transition period of about five years, and we need that clarity as soon as possible.

Andrew Bulmer: I am relatively unexercised about whether it is done through enabling legislation or written in from day one; what I am exercised about is getting the regulations delivered quickly. We are trying to prepare for the future regime. Dame Judith Hackitt called for a culture change and we, as an organisation, are driving that hard into our membership. They are receptive, and wish to adapt and move to the new regime as quickly as they can. It is difficult to prepare without the information, so I am less concerned about the mechanism; I am just concerned that we need to see the rules.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Q The previous panel had a representative who owns the freehold of a lot of blocks. Andrew, you represent the property management sector. Both of you have painted a picture of the Bill causing investors to leave freehold ownership. In your submission, you said that the legislation as drafted could mean that there is nobody willing and able, particularly within residential management organisations, to take on the responsibility of residential management. I think you said that the freehold interest could revert to the Crown. What should be in the Bill to prevent that from happening?

Andrew Bulmer: I will lead with that one, Chair. I think that question was directed at me. I will come back to what needs to be in the Bill. The commentary behind this is that there is a clear and understandable push through the Law Commission and through the work being done by Government to vest the freehold or commonhold interest or the management of the development in the hands of the residents themselves, who thereby have democratic control over their development, and we find the logic of that compelling. The challenge is that it means those residents will be in charge of their own affairs. We can see in the example of Miami—the building that collapsed there—that the residents association was challenged in terms of its competence to manage the building safely. That does not mean that we abandon the adventure. I think we progress with it, but we progress with our eyes open and that means we have to support those directors.

I would like to see a support mechanism for directors who wish to actively manage their own affairs, so they can feel supported and get guidance where they need it. There would also need to be support for those directors in terms of quality assurance of their suppliers. For building safety managers, for example, it is important there is some form of a register of quality assurance. We would like to see the managing agents they will depend on being regulated as per Lord Best’s RoPA report.

In the Bill, there would need to be the option for directors to decide if they choose—purely optional—to appoint an external director to take on the role of the AP or principal accountable person. The danger is that lay directors will look at the risks involved, and they will all step back and not take up directorships. That is already happening and is already a significant problem.

Every property manager will tell you that it is difficult to get directors to come forward these days as the responsibilities become clear. When the responsibilities of the Building Safety Bill are made clear to those directors, we expect it will be difficult to get people to take up those responsibilities voluntarily, unpaid and without the necessary expertise or competence to fulfil them. The ability to appoint an external director would be likely to mean overriding the articles of association of the development and implying covenants into the leases to enable the external director to be paid for. It would require protections for leaseholders from a director who went rogue. These provisions would need to be in the Bill to enable leaseholders to outsource their responsibilities to a professional if they chose to do so.

Building Safety Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Marie Rimmer

Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Q I asked the previous panel this question about construction products, but I should have held it for these two witnesses. By the way, I think that far too much plasterboard is used in homes anyway, and not for safety reasons but just because of quality of life, but that is another issue. The Bill does address construction products and future-proofs for products that we do not yet know about. That is fine, but quite a few historical building failures have resulted from the interrelationship—chemical, physical or whatever—between products that only emerged over time, or that should have been tested in the past. The products are safe on their own but not when put together in a certain way with other products. Could the Bill do more in that regard?

Peter Caplehorn: Thank you for that question, because it is of concern and it has been historically, as you said. The Bill as set out does start off in the right place. We have the structure to pursue those issues. In parallel, a lot of work is being done on the quality of testing and on verification of product quality. We are starting a new road that will start to address some of that, but equally, I would raise the move towards greater competence across the industry. Clearly, some product combinations will cause trouble and they can be seen by somebody fairly early on in the process who is competent in analysing those criteria. I would put designers and engineers firmly in that spot.

Some more difficult inherent problems that occur over time are in the province of the testing and research and development areas of product manufacturers themselves. They do a lot on research and development on products because, clearly, it is in nobody’s interest for things to emerge later on that will cause problems. None the less, we do see them.

Back to our central subject of the Bill, it does set out the framework, and I believe that with the secondary legislation coming along behind it, it will give us more opportunity to ensure that products are fully tested in combinations, to ensure that we reduce the prospect of any failure like that happening in future. None the less, it is a challenging arena.

Dr Steedman: It is important to remember that we are focusing on safety here, and that means human safety affected by a physical object, and not necessarily quality. The Bill will not necessarily transform the quality of the industry—that is a different thing all together. You are absolutely right that if you look at historical failures of engineered structures, in many cases it is to do with communication between different parties involved in a very complex industry and the long chain that Peter described. The failure to understand the consequences of the assumptions of the person who did that piece of work leads to an issue in years to come that people cannot diagnose. There are some very famous examples of that.

Perhaps one of the additional points worth making is on the digital information. New standards are being developed today on digital management of fire safety information, for example, and new tools—there is a BSI identifier tool to allow a persistent and enduring identifier to be applied to individual products, so that downstream, you could walk around a building in years’ time and identify precisely what that was, and if an issue had arisen you would be able to trace it back.

Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendation on the “golden thread”, the digital trail of construction products and how they are assembled, and the ownership of the building through life management are a vital part of the culture change that will enable a much easier identification of problems in future. As Peter says, the physics is relatively well understood; if people do the right tests, they will find the problem, but sometimes things surface many years on and we want to catch that at the earliest possible stage, to make sure we avoid safety issues.

[Ms Rimmer]

Q I am particularly interested in the building safety fund. It is not accessible for properties that have social tenants in them. How does that impact on housing associations? I understand that 40% of all social housing built last year was without grant. If the building fund is not accessible, how do they finance it?

Dr Steedman: I am very sorry, but I cannot really address any questions about the funds. I am not an expert.