Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill

Vikki Slade Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Member is very kind—I am sure my experience is as great as many other Members of the House. I am coming to what we believe would be a preferable standard. Our approach is that these issues of “commercial interests” should be expunged from the Bill, and that the tolerability approach should be removed. We believe that existing homes and buildings should be remediated to meet the standard of fire safety required in the building regulations that were uprated in 2018, after Grenfell.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Although this Bill is specifically about the remediation of cladding, this issue goes further. Building control is typically undertaken or at least instructed by the local planning authority, and is now instructed and employed by the developers. When my constituents Trisha and Ray moved into their new build in Wimborne, they found that the structural issues in their property had not been independently signed off. They have now found that no one has access to the structural drawings of their building other than the inspector, so when they had problems with their roof, the council had no details, they could not access details and they could not check compliance. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for the protection of residents, an ethical wall needs to be created between developers and inspectors, with proper enforcement and mandatory Housing Ombudsman Service membership for developers?

[Gideon Amos]

I certainly support my hon. Friend’s plea. I will come to the issue of the independence of building inspectors, which is very important.

Let me return to standards. The building regulations are the standard that the Government have set; they are needed for newly built homes to be safe, so the same standard therefore has to apply to the homes that people already live in. I have visited high-rise apartments in London and elsewhere, and seen them covered in scaffolding and being remediated under the developer scheme, but many of them are being left with so much cladding breaching building regulations and fire safety standards that residents cannot get insurance.

It is the insurance that really gives the game away. If the building really was safe, why would the insurance premiums be so high? We have increases in insurance costs of 56% and higher. For that reason, many owners cannot sell or get a new mortgage, so they sink into negative equity and become mortgage prisoners in their own home.