Building Safety Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Theo Clarke and Marie Rimmer

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Rimmer]

I do not know whether Mr Walker would like to comment on any of those questions.

Kieran Walker: It is not an area for the HBF. I will not comment further.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Q My first question is to Richard. I am particularly interested in the reforms to the building control profession. Do you think that the problems identified by Dame Judith Hackitt have been addressed in the Bill? In particular, I am interested in the Government’s right to retain the power of duty holders to choose their own building control body.

Richard Silva: The Bill is an excellent framework in lots of different areas, but it is a framework. As Justin Bates said in his evidence last week, it is a good and admirable starting point but there are lots of areas, lots of limbs within the Bill, that, quite understandably, because we cannot foresee every situation, will need to be dealt with as specific areas are developed and understood, consultations undertaken, experts work with MHCLG officials, and so on, to bring precise details of policy forward. I am not an expert in the certification and qualifications arena, but you have heard from the previous panel and you had fire experts last week.

What I do know is that, in our business, meaningfully and more explicitly post Grenfell, but for longer than that— in our resident engagements, we interact with 90,000 residents every year at some level—we have put in place a specific and dedicated fire life safety team in HomeGround. In that team, there are chartered fire surveyors, ex-London Fire Brigade officers, building surveyors and a small legal team. Their role, in collaboration with our estates management team, is to work closely together.

Our estates management team will basically audit all the managing agents who are responsible for the day-to-day running of our blocks around the country. Where there are clearly some deficiencies in, for example, fire risk assessments or, frankly, poor stewardship by the managing agent—that happens in all industries—our fire life safety team will go in and work with the managing agent to put special measures in place to get that building fit for purpose. That comes at a cost. Some of these things, by the way, are just bad life-cycle maintenance stuff—things that should have been replaced five years ago. That is a legitimate cost for the residents who live there.

That team has been inundated over the past 18 months. We have been trying to secure funding from the building safety fund and the ACM cladding remediation fund, which are very welcome funding pools, to get the bigger picture and to get the higher-risk buildings fixed. We have gone out and hired the best people we can find—by the way, it is a tough market out there, because not a lot of people are qualified to do a lot of this stuff—but until there are more specific guidelines from the regulator and the regulatory regime on what the qualifications need to be, I do not know whether they are fully qualified or not.

Kieran Walker: I would reinforce the point that Richard has just made. As we have seen with the communal wall service—the EWS1 form and the cladding external wall system—and its evolution since July 2019, it has been difficult to get hold not only of people but of people who can then be insured to carry out things like EWS1 surveys or fire assessments in the first place. There is a real shortage of people out there who are able to undertake that. Again, to reinforce Richard’s point, it is quite ambiguous as to exactly what qualifications are needed/accepted if we are going to undertake the assessments.