Building Safety Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Ruth Cadbury

Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

I absolutely agree with that point.

As I said regarding an earlier amendment, the definition of the requirements and the core functions as set out to the Building Safety Regulator will require it to go out to a range of different agencies. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale made a point about the Health and Safety Executive. I am a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions. The Health and Safety Executive is world-leading in many ways, and is going in and out of businesses looking at, for example, issues surrounding covid. It is very much people-focused, and I believe that giving the regulator the absolute ability to determine safety is important. I do not think that the amendment is necessary; I think it could end up creating more confusion and issues, particularly surrounding what health and wellbeing means to individuals. As such, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

[Ruth Cadbury]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. The Minister has said that this Bill will bring in a new era for building safety, but will it? I agree that it is better than nothing—it is definitely an improvement on the legislative framework that we have had until now—but I am concerned about all of the gaps where people are working in, living in and occupying the many buildings that are outwith the scope of the Bill as currently drafted. That is why amendment 10, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale, needs to be in the Bill. As many witnesses have told us, the safety of a building depends on a range of factors, including its location and what it is used for. If a tower block is located underneath the arrival path of an airport, for instance, that is a safety issue as well as a planning issue. As we will see in later clauses, so many occupants and so many types of buildings are excluded from this Bill. It is called the Building Safety Bill and, in my view, a building safety Bill should be about making all buildings safe.

It is not clear whether the Bill will protect students in student accommodation. We all remember when fire ripped up the sides of The Cube in Bolton, so are student residences protected? Are care home residents covered by the scope of this Bill; will they be protected if a fire rips through their building or up its sides? Of course, care home residents are, almost by definition, among the least mobile in our communities, perhaps superseded only by occupants of hospital beds. They cannot move quickly in the case of a fire, and my understanding is that they are excluded from the scope of the Bill.

Building Safety Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Ruth Cadbury

Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

Forgive me—I hear the point again, in a new form, but I still do not think that that is necessary. We have to rely on the expertise of the regulator and everybody who will be involved. We are so focused on building safety risk at the moment, and rightly so, given everything that has happened. I feel that the work is there.

I had my own mini-experience of coastal erosion growing up. It was not in Stroud, which is landlocked, save for the River Severn. I grew up in Yorkshire and went from Filey to Scarborough to school on a school bus. As we were going along, a hotel called Holbeck Hall fell very steadily into the sea. Many Members may know about it. It went on for many months. It was completely fascinating to school children, but even those many decades ago it was known about, thought through and seriously considered. Everybody was focused on it. Given the work that has been done in the Bill, I do not believe that, were a building in that state of peril, the regulator would not pick up on it and be able to help.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Lady feels confident that the regulator’s powers cover high-risk buildings and the risks to buildings from flooding, overheating and the other aspects of climate change that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale covered, but the Bill as drafted defines a higher-risk building in clauses 58 to 62 and onwards as being residential buildings over 18 metres in height. That will exclude many buildings built on flood plains, and many flats, such as those in my constituency that get dangerously overheated—

[The Chair]

Order. Ms Cadbury, please sit down. I exhort Members to make interventions short and sharp. People have the opportunity to speak to the substantive issue if they wish. Please keep it short and sharp and to the point. I do apologise for being direct.

Building Safety Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Ruth Cadbury

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q I asked a really basic question of our witnesses in the first panel on Thursday last week about living in a household in a high-rise building. There is so much fear now, understandably, because of Grenfell and because of what you have all been through. It is hard to be quite rational. You are getting into the detail. As part of getting to trust the buildings that you live in, do you think more needs to be done to put out communications about safety of buildings and resident responsibility? We heard some quite compelling evidence that high rises and normal houses are equally problematic if certain things happen. Do you think there should be communication to build faith and trust, and a sense of safety as well?

Alison Hills: Yes, I have to say that I think that would be helpful. When we found out about all the defects in our building, it was in the middle of lockdown, so we were stuck for 24 hours a day in a flat that was potentially unsafe. All these videos started coming out on Twitter about Grenfell, the fires and Kingspan. It was absolutely horrific, from a leaseholder’s perspective: people were genuinely frightened to send their children to sleep at night.

I cannot reiterate enough just how difficult that period was. That was one of the reasons that I made the decision to move out; I am lucky that I had that choice, but many others do not have it. Many are still putting their children to sleep at night in a building where they do not feel safe. Leaseholders absolutely need more support with that. They also need more mental health support, because we are just relying on each other at the moment. There is a very good cladding community, and the leaseholders have been a brilliant support—my MP Daisy, who is on the Committee, has been a brilliant support as well—but I think that the Government need to take more responsibility to support their constituents with the mental health impact. I cannot reiterate enough how difficult it has been.

Steve Day: I think that leaseholders supporting each other is one thing, but you have to remember that the building safety fund has asked us to create all these reports showing all the defects. Unless someone comes and fixes those defects, the horse has bolted. The building safety fund reports show all these missing fire barriers, cavity barriers and internal fire stopping. If you check approved document B, getting the fixings wrong has a material impact on the fire rating of the external wall system.

Unfortunately, you have turned millions of people into fire experts. We now know what ADB says, and we now know that a small difference in the render thickness of our external wall systems can have a material impact on the fire rating. We know, when we look at the safety certificate from the British Board of Agrément for 100 products across the UK, that not meeting the exact specifications contravenes the certificate; the head of the BBA confirmed that, and I am grateful to him.

We know all that and we have all that information, yet not only have we been left to pay for it all, potentially, but we have all the worry of it. You cannot put that back in the box unless this is remediated. Unfortunately, in the leasehold community, we have been exposed to an awful lot of fire safety evidence that would lead us to believe that we are not in safe homes. Until the remediation is done, I just do not think that we can put it back in the box.

Alison Hills: I have not specifically been asked a question about this, but another problem is that the building safety fund process has been very difficult. The fund only covers some defects in some buildings. We have been told that we are eligible, but we still cannot get any of the fund because there are a number of onerous contract terms. MHCLG and our managing agent have been at loggerheads over the contract terms for almost the past year, and we are in limbo with a huge potential bill of £200,000 hanging over our heads. That is just not an acceptable position to be in—we simply should not be in that position.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Q I think that you have started to answer my question, and thank you for your presentation on the polluter pays principle, but I want to go back to what is in the Bill for existing buildings. The new building safety regime applies to buildings of at least 11 metres in height or at least seven storeys. Do you think that it is right that in effect there is a height limitation defining the risk, or do you have an alternative suggestion? What else is not in the Bill’s scope that you think should be?

Alison Hills: First of all, I do not think that there should be any height restrictions to the building safety fund. We have seen videos in which the 18-metre figure came up because the people making the decision did not have time to come up with a better figure. There does not seem to be any reason behind the 18-metre rule. The materials are still flammable in buildings under 18 metres; they can still catch fire, as we have seen.

In my view, the building safety fund needs to cover all heights of building and all defects, not just cladding. I have spoken to a shared owner in the London Olympic park who does not have any cladding on his building, but who is facing an £80,000 bill just for missing fire breaks and insulation. That is just an unacceptable position to be in. There are a number of fire safety defects that do not relate to cladding, and they should absolutely be covered.

Steve Day: I would say, “Have a look at the materials.” We all accept that ACM cladding, linked to Grenfell of course, is dangerous, but you may not have realised that the Victorian Building Authority conducted a test last year and concluded that expanded polystyrene, because of very rapid vertical fire spread, ultimately creating fire pools that go down as well as up—not the pools, but the fire—was as dangerous as ACM. Why do we have this categorisation that ACM is the only dangerous cladding when EPS has been proved by the VBA to be as dangerous? That has implications on the 8414 tests because everyone knows that the grate is at the bottom of the rig. How do you test downward fire spread if the grate is there? It will just test upward, so there are issues there.

This is why I am always talking about trust. We need to get back to trusting our materials. We need to get back to having a large stick if the cladding manufacturers mis-sell products. In the aftermath of the Grenfell fire,181 samples failed combustibility tests. We need a big stick. The building industry and the construction industry are showing that they cannot be trusted, unfortunately. That is why we need full redress.

Building Safety Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Ruth Cadbury

Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q This might be a question for the Minister, but do you feel, given how the Bill and the regulations are going, that there will be scope for that wider definition and the performance-based work? Do you think the groundwork has been done and that we can fit around it?

Peter Caplehorn: I think there is a lot of work to be done in this area. We have been working closely with the MHCLG team as this has developed, but I still think that we probably need to map out a number of practical examples so that when the regulations eventually emerge we have the right practical answers. That might be in the form of guidance, but it certainly needs a little more development before we have a system that I could vouch for to deliver the outcomes needed.

Dr Steedman: There are interesting lessons from other sectors. The medical devices industry, for example, faces those challenges the entire time. Whether it is a sticking plaster or a heart device, there is a whole difference in the level of risk, so the way in which that type of product is regulated and the standard developed is another place to look. I agree with Peter that we need to take our time. The architecture of the Bill is there to do this, but there is a lot of work to do in developing the guidance and secondary legislation.

[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.

Building Safety Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Ruth Cadbury

Thursday 9th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q I should have asked this question before, so I apologise. This is a pretty basic question, but we have gone straight into quite a lot of technical points. Since Grenfell there is understandably a lot of fear about high-rise buildings. How safe would you say a high-rise building is and what is the risk to life of a high-rise fire? I am interested in your expert opinions.

Dan Daly: It is very difficult in the context of Grenfell because that is obviously where people’s minds are focused, but in my professional experience you are generally at no greater risk in a high-rise building than you are elsewhere, and the figures bear that out. We see a number of deaths. My experience is in London and if you think about London, we see the commonality of people dying in fires is not where they live, but the circumstances of them, the vulnerabilities and the care they may be subject to, or the lack of care in some instances. That is what drives those deaths.

None the less, it is recognised that people will feel nervous in those homes. There is more that we can do and this regime helps with that. The work of fire and rescue services goes beyond response; we do much more than that. It is also about prevention and protection. The protection element is about looking at the buildings, and the prevention is about the advice we can bring to people in their own homes, and it all contributes to reducing that fire risk.

There is something here that people will recognise, which is that there is limited capability for fighting fires at height. We know that and have experienced that. That in itself will not help with public confidence, but the stats of the matter—this is an emotional argument, so stats are not always the best place to find ourselves—do not support the view that you are at any higher risk. However, we must address the fact that people have and should have the right to feel safe in their own homes. We are spending time on that, and I said I think it is the right place to focus the regime for now to build that confidence, but we must have the ability to extend the scope and make people safe wherever they live.

Sir Ken Knight: In the context of high-rise buildings, the differences are that it can be more dependent on the other measures in place to ensure that compartmentation is intact, such as fire doors, having self-closers fitted, ensuring that smoke ventilations are working—all of which, as we have heard in another place of inquiry, was woefully lacking. I think it is more dependent on that.

What is key is something Judith Hackitt picked up in this Bill: the residents’ voice as well as the residents’ responsibility. That is absolutely key to this as well. They need to be assured that they have the key information, but they also have to understand that they have a key responsibility to ensure that they and the others in the same building are safe as well. I think that combination makes high-rise different from a two-bedroom cottage somewhere, because it is more dependent on others and the compartmentation is more key. That is why I support starting at 18 metres in the Bill—starting at 18 metres for buildings in scope. That is the place to start, from our experience over the last few years.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Q On that very point, I absolutely agree with Sir Ken. The six tower blocks beside the elevated section of the M4 in my constituency, Brentford Towers, were built roughly 50 years ago. In the 35 or so years I have been in and around Brentford as a councillor and an MP, I am aware of at least one fatal fire in a flat, which destroyed that flat, but the evidence that I saw afterwards showed that the fire did not spread, beyond some smoke damage in the hallway of the four flats on that floor—it did not spread elsewhere, because of the compartmentation and the way they were designed to deal with fire, in a way that was messed up with Grenfell.

In terms of new build, building professionals have told me that in this country we have moved from designing and building for fire safety, as Brentford Towers were built, towards concerns about thermal insulation and energy saving, so have started to lose the focus on fire, whereas in other countries the two have gone together. Do the witnesses agree with that? If so, do they feel that the Bill addresses that challenge?

Sir Ken Knight: I have also heard it said—I have no evidence that it is correct—that the two sometimes seem to be movable objects in ensuring sufficient insulation, and indeed in making the homes and lives of residents much better and much less expensive because of heat loss and energy, and in meeting the very important net zero agendas as well. I think the Bill does address that. It makes it very clear that there are hard stops at each of those gateways that are put in place in the Bill, which the developer cannot pass until they have satisfied the Building Safety Regulator that they have met the fire safety requirements and the fire safety case. That has not ever been the case before. You could have a design and build that would move on and move on in process, and move beyond that gateway before being checked by the appropriate enforcing authority. I think the Bill has gone a long way towards addressing that very point—that fire and structural safety are not left as a second cousin.

Dan Daly: Absolutely. There is the ongoing role of the approved documents that sit behind the building regulations. That is an important part of what will support the endeavour of the Bill. We need to keep working on those. They have fallen woefully out of date with modern methods of construction. That is something that needs to be reviewed with the Building Safety Regulator going forward, and challenged to make sure that the appropriate documents are kept up to the date.

There is something about the competency of individuals as well, in reading those approved documents in tandem. There are documents that talk about how a building is structurally sound and how it is fire-safety sound, before it starts to talk about the thermal performance of the building, but the two should be read in conjunction. What we have seen is people not necessarily with the right competence adopting convenient interpretations of those documents rather than following what the documents are trying to say. That again points back to the competency issue and the oversight by the regulator, and hopefully the oversight of the gateway processes, to prevent those things happening again.