Building Safety Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Cadbury]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Dowd. The new clause seeks an assessment of the mental health impact for leaseholders in dwellings with building safety risks.

It may be normal in areas such as health, social care and justice to consider in legislation the mental health impact on victims, but it is unusual in matters of the built environment. I hope in my comments to address the impact that the crisis is having on the mental health of millions of people across the country. Any MP who has looked into their postbag will know the turmoil and trauma that the crisis has caused to leaseholders. As the hon. Member for St Albans said earlier, they are innocent parties—the only innocent parties—and they have had the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

The new clause makes three aspects clear. First, there is the trauma caused to people by living in a building that is unsafe and that they fear could go up in flames. Then there is the trauma of the financial bills that so many leaseholders face, which can run into tens of thousands for many. Finally, there is the trauma caused by being trapped and unable to sell or remortgage a home. That is a toxic trio that we know is impacting people’s mental health. Survey after survey has confirmed the huge impact.

In a survey for Which?, a leaseholder called Georgie said:

“I don’t know of any leaseholder whose mental health isn’t affected in some way due to this horrendous situation.”

That chimes with the findings in the landmark report by the Cladding Action Group, which found that nine out of 10 of those surveyed said their mental health had

“deteriorated as a direct result of the situation”.

Some 94% said they were anxious and worried, 83% said they were angry—rightly, I might say—and 59% felt abandoned, which is a point I will come back to later. People also said they had had to take time off work. Health conditions had been made worse. Many were seeking or planning to seek medical help for stress. Some 67% said their mental health had got worse since they were last interviewed. Those numbers should serve as a chilling reminder of the impact, toll and misery of this crisis—a crisis that this Government have effectively caused.

It is hard to convey just what the fear of living in an unsafe building must feel like—how it must feel for people to go to sleep at night not knowing if they are safe in their bed. A constituent who wrote to me after the fire at Grenfell told me that they went past and saw the fire raging from their bus. The images of that night are seared on that constituent’s brain, as it is in the minds of so many other people, even if we just saw it on the TV.

Grenfell was, of course, not the only residential fire with serious consequences. The Cube fire in Bolton and Richmond House in south-west London are just two in recent years. Locally, there are many more examples. Luckily, Sperry House in Brentford was caught in time before the fire raged across the full building—before life was lost. Thanks to the fire services, it was caught in time.

[Mike Amesbury]

Yesterday, Sky highlighted the case of Zoe, who lives in a cramped, one-bedroom flat with small children, but is unable to move out of the flat because of the toxicity of the building safety standards. That is having a huge effect on her mental health issues, including about schools in the future and just the anxiety my hon. Friend illustrates.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend gives yet another illustration of the stress and mental health impact of this crisis. On the subject of people almost frightened to go to sleep at night, people with disabilities and their carers face even greater anxiety and worry over fire safety risks and whether they would be able to get out of their home to safety. Many are struggling to get adequate personal emergency evacuation plans sorted with their building managers.

Paragraph (b) relates to those facing staggeringly high bills. Every day, we see more and more reports of the skyrocketing costs facing leaseholders. One of my constituents, who is a shared owner in Brentford, is facing a bill of £15,000, and says:

“I fear it will be significantly higher...I don’t have this money and it will bankrupt me. I fear homelessness...I’m going to lose the home I worked so hard for.”

Leaseholders across the country are facing staggering and life-changing bills to fix cladding and fire safety defects, and more. Service charges are skyrocketing and, for many, insurance premiums are also shooting through the roof. Two of my constituents are facing an extra £2,000 on their annual insurance bill. Many people face bankruptcy. That is bad enough in itself, because of course it means a lifelong impact, whatever one’s financial future. However, for accountants, lawyers and others, their professional status is permanently destroyed if they are declared bankrupt.

Overall, there is the fear of homelessness for people who got on the housing ladder—they did the right thing, as we often say—but are now falling to the bottom of the snakes and ladders board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury]

If we were to push the new clause to a vote and it was accepted, the details of that are in there. This is not unique in legislation. It can be done and it can be enacted if the Government will is there. We are trying to establish whether the Government actually care about the people who are impacted by this crisis.

[Mike Amesbury]

When 90% of leaseholders surveyed by UK Cladding Action Group and End Our Cladding Scandal cite mental health and anxiety as a major concern, and when 25% have considered taking their own lives—suicidal thoughts—there is a big issue. It is nearly five years on from Grenfell. My hon. Friend, a good colleague, makes a powerful case for the new clause to be included in the landscape of the new building safety regime in this country.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend confirms the power of this issue. Finally, I will address the Minister’s point about the Building Safety Regulator. To be honest, the point of the regulator is not generally, as drafted, to be concerned about people. The Minister said that the regulator will engage with leaseholders, but engaging with a leaseholder does not actually make them feel better.

My other concern is the growing number. We talked about the UK Cladding Action Group survey. It will have surveyed people who are probably aware of the situation they are in, but we know that people are still buying flats in buildings and more and more people are becoming aware of these issues. I would not buy a flat in a leasehold block, particularly one with a term of less than 20 years, because I have been enmeshed in this issue as a representative MP since before Grenfell. I know what it is like, but too many people are not aware, and are continuing to buy, get mortgages, set up homes and settle down in buildings that they then find are affected. I met the son of a friend of mine a couple of months ago, and he asked, “Could you explain to me this EWS1 problem? I am not moving, but some of my neighbours want to sell, and they did not know anything about it.” I said, “Well, how long have you got?”

Building Safety Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause would ensure that the Government published an assessment of the impact of building safety costs on registered providers of social housing. The National Housing Federation last week announced that one in 10 affordable homes planned by housing associations will no longer be built, because of the costs of making buildings safe. The impact of the Government’s decision to effectively lock out social landlords from funding, because costs are less likely to fall on the shoulders of leaseholders, is clear in the report: 12,900 out of 116,777 new affordable homes will be cut from plans in order to prioritise spending on building safety. Earlier this year, the G15 group stated that their bill would be £3.6 billion by 2036. Nationally, housing associations stated last year that it would cost £10 billion to make all homes safe from fire risk over the next 10 years. The National Housing Federation also announced last week that social rent homes would be the hardest hit, because they build the majority of that tenure within their own income envelope rather than with Government grants.

I need hardly remind the Minister that the country managed to build only 6,644 homes for social rent in 2019 and 2020, but lost 24,120 from the stock, resulting in a net loss of 17,476 homes for social rent. With one in 10 households stuck on waiting lists for more than five years to get a home, we absolutely cannot afford to be losing more social homes. We must build them at scale.

I was glad to hear that the new Secretary of State appears to agree with me and so I hope that addressing this aspect of the building safety crisis can form part of the thinking in this respect. It is not just home building itself that will be impacted. The 61 housing associations surveyed by the National Housing Federation said that they would have to divert £730 million away from routine maintenance such as upgrading kitchens or bathrooms or doing other essential safety work. Half a million social homes are considered to be non-decent—as we have seen in the coverage on ITV. Shockingly, 40% of those are classed as unfit for human habitation. These homes may have mould or damp, rodent issues, or physical damage.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent description of the current state of much social rent housing. That is partly because the landlords—councils and housing associations—have not had adequate funding to bring them up to scratch, and the building safety crisis in relation to social rent homes is adding to that. The Minister may want to attack the Labour Government, because that is what Conservative Governments frequently do, but does my hon. Friend agree that, while the Labour Government brought 1 million social rent homes up to standard 20 years ago, such a programme needs to happen again now and this crisis is only making that pressure worse?

[Mike Amesbury]

I concur with my hon. Friend. When I was a councillor in the Manchester area, I saw the results of that very standards programme. But we cannot excuse landlords; it is on their shoulders to ensure that the types of horrific cases that we have seen are sorted quickly. We cannot afford to allow money to be taken away from tackling these issues. Analysis has shown that housing associations have paid six times as much as developers to get buildings fixed. Given the huge profits that have been made in the private sector, it is a scandal that it is not doing more to pay to fix faults, many of which it created.

The first amendment that Labour tabled in the Committee centred on the impact of climate change on building safety. Building safety considerations are competing with building green houses. The Government have announced funding, but it will take much more to ensure that social homes are warm and energy efficient. With housing accounting for 14% of our emissions, we must make that a priority.

The new clause would ensure that the Government looked at the impact of this crisis on future levels of house building in the UK by social home providers, on homelessness and on the maintenance of social homes. It would require them to make recommendations for action necessary to ensure that building safety issues do not inhibit our ability to reach the house-building targets, and that current provision of housing is maintained and improved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The very notion of shared ownership implies to me—and I am sure to others in Committee—an element of joint responsibility. Yet it is abundantly clear that, when it comes to picking up the remediation costs to fix a plethora of faults throughout the landscape of shoddy development, there is nothing shared about it. I know that Ministers and departmental officials will have seen the emails, letters and case studies, many of them exposed by the media, that shine a light on the desperation of many residents in shared ownership properties. I was recently made aware of one such building in London, which was covered in flammable cladding and has wooden decking. It is under 18 metres, so leaseholders are not covered by the Bill. They are not classed as high risk. A bill for £85,000 per household from their housing association has just landed through their doors. Some residents own as little as 25% of their flat, but risk being responsible for 100% of the cost.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Does my hon. Friend agree—from what he was saying, I think he does—that the Government must address this iniquity in shared ownership, where shared owners own only a proportion of their flat yet are responsible for 100% of the cost? Does he also agree that for constituents such as mine, fire safety has been a crisis? They were evacuated from their homes at a week’s notice by their social rent landlord from a property built by Berkeley Group. They are homeless, and they cannot get on the housing ladder, even though the housing association has been able to repay them the market cost of the share they own. Does he agree that that is wholly iniquitous?

Building Safety Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Thursday 21st October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd.

I have a number of questions. The building safety charge has proved to be somewhat controversial among leaseholders, residents, tenants and cladding campaigners—the UK Cladding Action Group, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the National Leasehold Campaign and so on. The Minister has mentioned that charges will be fair and transparent. What is the definition of fair and transparent? What is the Department’s assessment of what will be fair and transparent? Given that on 17, if not 18, occasions a promise was made not to put charges for historical remediation costs, which we will get on to in a moment, on to the shoulders of leaseholders, there is a real fear that there could be considerable interplay between the building safety charge, historical remediation costs, service charges and so forth. I would like the Minister to expand on that. Of course, many leaseholders over the past two weeks have had massive invoices arrive through the door for remedial costs relating to historical building safety defects. Some are going bankrupt, as I know he and Department officials will know.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that the existing service charge system for too many leaseholders is opaque and inconsistent? They never know what they will be charged for and, more important, how much they will be charged in future quarters. Leaseholders need not only an improvement to the current service charge system but to be confident that any new charging system will be far better than the current one.

[Mike Amesbury]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and pertinent point, which I am sure the Minister will respond to. I know that it has been a particular issue in shared ownership properties, particularly in London and the south-east. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that I and other Members have raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury]

The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), admitted that most cladded buildings were built in the period between 2000 and 2017. Given that the Bill is likely to become law only in July 2022 or later, the limitation period is likely to capture only buildings completed up to and around July 2007, assuming that the Bill keeps making pace as quickly as it has. By the Government’s own admittance, then, extending the period for claims under the Defective Premises Act by only 15 years would miss a significant number of buildings, which is why our amendment proposes a change to 30 years. That is based on evidence, which I know other Members will bring to the debate today.

It is important that we do not mistake this change to the Defective Premises Act as giving more than some relief to a small number of leaseholders and residents in the current building safety crisis. Many of their building owners have become insolvent, as Ministers know. As has been mentioned, many leaseholders will simply not be able to tie themselves up in lengthy legal battles with wealthy developers. The Government must fund remediation up front. That does not require a Bill—it is a political decision. The polluter pays principle should be used to recoup the costs. That is the only way to address this.

Our time is certainly not wasted in this Committee Room. Over the last few weeks we have discussed some really good, solid, life-changing proposals and clauses, but the Bill does not address the fundamental principle of polluter pays. The amendment would certainly strengthen the clause. We might not believe it, but sometimes people listen to our debates, read Hansard and go through it line by line, so it is important that collectively we show this place at its best, give life to people’s voices and pass the amendment.

[Ruth Cadbury]

It is a pleasure to serve under you again, Mr Dowd. I reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale has said about the number of dwellings that will fall outside the 15-year catch. Obviously, we welcome its being extended from six to 15 years, but a case from my constituency illustrates why 30 years would be more appropriate.

I have had the honour and pleasure to represent Brentford for over 30 years, and a lot of new homes have been developed during that time. My office is keeping tabs on construction issues with blocks of flats, including those in Brentford ward. I can tell which blocks have required no casework during all my years of representation—it is those that were built more than 30 years ago under a regime of good quality construction and in a culture of safety. Those constructed after that were built at a time when standards were starting to fall. The culture of competition and the privatisation of building control meant that there was price competition and a reduction in inspections. There was the demise of the role of the clerk of works, corners were cut, and there was a skills shortage in the construction industry. Taken together, as we have said many times, that created this crisis. My casework shows that well over 25 separate estates in my constituency that were built in the last 20 years—since around 2000—have issues with cladding, lack of compartmentalisation, and shoddy workmanship.

I also picked up casework on damp and safety as a councillor. I will give two examples Even before Grenfell, leaseholders at Holland Gardens, which was built by Barratt, had forced Barratt to replace all the window fixings because they had not been done properly. It was subsequently found that the building had flammable cladding, so scaffolding was put up again. I have already mentioned the Paragon, which was built in about 2003. We do not know what its future is, but it is empty because it is too dangerous to occupy. I absolutely endorse the amendment’s aim of extending the timescale from 15 to 30 years. There is so much evidence. I can see it on my own patch, but we all have evidence.

Building Safety Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Thursday 21st October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury]

The Minister has spoken before about his work on the upcoming social housing reforms. We are grateful to him for his hard work and to all those stakeholders currently involved, and I am glad to be able to add to the debate about reforming the social housing sector, with particular reference to this clause.

Clause 137 is a good clause, implementing something that was raised in the social housing Green Paper from 2018. Getting rid of the democratic filter for complaints from tenants to the housing ombudsman is a good thing, and I am pleased that the Government are using this opportunity to implement those parts of the social housing reforms that they have been saying they will make for some considerable time—since all the way back to Grenfell. We have tabled the amendment because we believe there is one other, related change that can be implemented now as part of the Bill.

The recent television series with ITV journalist Dan Hewitt has highlighted the unacceptable conditions in which some social housing tenants live. People are living in overcrowded, cold homes with mould, damp and holes in the ceiling, and some have considerable rodent problems—the kinds of issues that no Member present would tolerate for a single day. Thanks to the excellent investigation by Dan Hewitt and “ITV News”, we recently saw shocking examples of tenants not being listened to by housing providers. “Surviving Squalor” was an appalling reminder not only of the conditions in which some people are forced to live, but of the fact that such conditions continue because their pleas are ignored by social housing providers.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I gave examples earlier of the two blocks built in the early 2000s in my then ward, which is now in my constituency. As a councillor, I received complaints from tenants and leaseholders about damp, repairs and so forth. They were dealt with, or not dealt with, individually by the housing managers. Tenants and leaseholders were not listened to, and they were treated as individual complaints. Had the residents been listened to—they were meeting collectively—it would have been picked up a lot earlier that the individual problems were caused by systemic building faults in those blocks of flats. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is exactly why a voice for tenants is absolutely essential?

[Mike Amesbury]

I definitely agree with my hon. Friend—I wouldn’t dare not—and this cannot be allowed to continue.

Building Safety Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury]

It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to follow the Minister, whom I welcome to his place on the Front Bench. I concur with his comments on the tragic events surrounding Sir David Amess and on the loss of James Brokenshire, who served this House and, indeed, the Department well over the years.

The amendment seeks to broaden the definition of risk. During Committee stage, Members and Ministers have heard and reviewed evidence from many stakeholders, including the Construction Industry Council, which has argued that the current definition—which applies to buildings below 18 metres or with fewer than seven storeys—is not a sufficient definition of genuine risk. Indeed, the Fire Brigades Union argues in its written evidence, provided just a few days ago—I am sure that Members have had the opportunity to read it—that the scope is not broad enough.

For example, the fire at a residential care setting in Crewe not very long ago—we have referred to it throughout our deliberations—would not have been covered by the proposed definition because it was below 18 metres and had fewer than seven storeys. Yet the residents who called that building home were undoubtedly at a higher risk than many of us in this Committee Room.

The fire at the Cube student accommodation in Bolton, which has also been referred to throughout this Committee, would not have been covered by this definition, either. Yet in a relatively short period, a significant fire destroyed the building and—there but for the grace of God—nearly cost lives.

Although it is acknowledged that hospitals and care homes are covered by previous clauses, which have been debated, their focus is also on buildings below 18 metres or with fewer than seven storeys. The 18-metre threshold has caused considerable debate, as have comments made by officials in the now renamed Department. I am not at all confident that the Department itself believes that it is an appropriate figure. Indeed, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), said that relying

“on crude height limits…does not reflect the complexity”

of the risk, as many Committee members will know. He concluded that height would need to

“sit alongside a broader range of risk factors”—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 24.]

Finally, given that buildings below the proposed threshold are no longer deemed to be at high risk, I find it rather perplexing that the Government would advertise for and recruit a civil servant on a salary of £77,000 to take charge of the new proposed loans regime to remediate building safety issues on buildings from 11 to 18 metres. If they are not at risk, they are not at risk.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Dowd. I echo the comments made across the Committee about our departed colleagues Mr Brokenshire and Sir David Amess.

I rise to support amendment 12, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale and the hon. Member for St Albans. I reinforce the point that risk to building safety should be defined by actual risk—as assessed by the many experts we have in this country and the systems that we use but should probably improve—and not by some arbitrary cut-off.

I will describe two examples. On building risk, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale mentioned the risk of occupation, which should be covered but from which so many users and so many types of residential building are excluded—a point that I have covered in previous Committee sittings.

In my constituency, we have six 22-storey tower blocks called the Brentford Towers, which are council blocks with a mixture of tenants and leaseholders and were built more than 40 years ago. Not so long ago, a man died in a fire in his flat in one of those blocks. The fire did not spread. There was smoke damage in the communal hallway, which was shared by three other flats, and a lot of the smoke went out of his windows or through the smoke escape hatch on the stairwell.

The fire did not spread upwards, downwards or into the other flats on the man’s floor, because the building was designed with fire safety in mind and had not subsequently been messed around with. The fire doors were all shut and the smoke vent was open. That is what was supposed to happen: it was a tragic death, but sadly the man might have died in any kind of home-based fire. No one else was injured, no other flat was damaged and the cost to the community was minimal.

The other example is a block of flats that I have mentioned before, Richmond House in Worcester Park in south London. It had four storeys, I believe, with just over 30 flats. Once the fire took hold, it took 11 minutes for that building to burn down completely. By the grace of God, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale said, no one died, although some people had smoke injuries.

Building Safety Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

[Mike Amesbury]

[Ruth Cadbury]

Building Safety Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Mike Amesbury

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Cadbury]

Q I asked a previous witness a question about the duty to co-operate in mixed use buildings with complex ownership structures. The Government have incorporated a duty to co-operate between the different accountable people and responsible people under fire safety legislation, who can be different people in a mixed-use building. Will this suffice, or do you see problems arising?

Andrew Bulmer: I see problems arising in so far as it is complex, and I can see litigation taking place as to who is the principal accountable person. That said, I am struggling to see what a better model could be. We may have to live with the complexity.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Councillor McCoy, in relation to building control and buildings below 18 metres, are there any changes you would like to see in the Bill?

Councillor McCoy: Yes, particularly in relation to the scope of buildings within the gateway scheme. At the moment, buildings that followed a permitted development are not covered by that, so we particularly want to make sure that all buildings are covered by the gateway process, otherwise a raft of buildings are out of that scope. It also needs to align with any future legislation: the planning reform White Paper contains some serious concerns for us, because it effectively puts swathes of large areas into permitted development and takes them out of the regime. The gateways have to apply to all buildings, or all new buildings.