Building Safety

Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am very happy to update the hon. Lady. There were 151 homes lost to the fire, but new homes had to be found for 209 households. I think she knows why that number is higher. So far, 184 have moved out of emergency accommodation into either temporary or permanent accommodation. That leaves 25 households who have still not accepted temporary or permanent accommodation. I hope she will appreciate that, while it is absolutely right that we work at pace and help those families to move as quickly as possible into permanent or temporary accommodation, as they choose—by the way, more than 300 homes are now available on the letting system, which is more than enough—no family can be pushed or told that they must make a decision and that they have no choice. It must be done at their pace. I cannot go into the details, but there are complicating factors with a number of the 25 households who are yet to accept temporary accommodation. There are a number of issues and it would be inappropriate, from what I know, to force those families to make a decision if they are not ready.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I continue to deal with concerns regarding the construction of a tower block in my constituency. The concern is that, although the cladding meets the building regulations, it is not fire safe—in other words, when it has been tested, it has been deemed not to be fire safe. When are we going to get around to sorting out the building regulations to ensure that all of our tower blocks are safe and that everybody can feel safe in their homes?

[Sajid Javid]

I am not aware of the particular tower block mentioned by the hon. Lady, but if she wants to give me more information, I will happily take a closer look. If I understood her correctly, she said that the cladding has passed building regulation tests but the tower block is not deemed safe, but I am not aware of such a case. In every case to which I have referred, it is our view that none of the cladding on a number of buildings meets building regulations, which is exactly why it needs to be removed.