Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many additional professionals able to undertake external wall surveys have been trained from 13 October and 1 December 2020.

The department is working with professional bodies to scale up capacity to carry out external wall system assessments. To speed up valuations where EWS1 forms are justified, the Government is providing nearly £700,000 funding to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to train up to 2,000 more assessors in 2021. The department is also considering ways to ensure technical experts can continue to take on more challenging work.