Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to help ensure that professional standards of (a) competence and (b) quality management are enforced in the sectors of (i) fire door installation, (ii) fire door manufacturing and (iii) fire-stopping in high rise buildings needing repairs.

The Building Safety Bill will strengthen the regulatory framework for construction products, including fire doors, by creating powers to require construction products to be safe before they can be placed on the United Kingdom market, and creating a statutory list of 'safety critical' construction products. For products deemed to be 'safety critical', manufacturers will be required to declare the performance of these products to a specific standard and to put in place factory control processes to make sure they are consistently met. The Government is also establishing a national regulator in the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) to lead and co-ordinate enforcement, confront poor practice, remove unsafe products from the market, and deal with safety concerns early through improved market surveillance.

The industry-led Competence Steering Group has produced frameworks and recommendations to improve the competence of professionals working in safety-critical roles across the sector, including installers. The Government is supporting the Group's ongoing work by sponsoring the British Standards Institution to develop a suite of national competence standards, and intends through the Building Safety Bill to introduce regulations to ensure that those involved in design and construction are competent to do so.