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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans his Department has made in response to the potential future identification of residential buildings being found not to be fire safe.

Through the Building Safety Bill, the Fire Safety Bill and changes to the Fire Safety Order, we are proposing a package of legislative changes that are going to ensure the problems identified with the current building and fire safety regime are rectified and residents are safe.

To focus the regime on risk, the intention is the scope of the new building safety regime will start with residential buildings with rates of fire which are considerably higher: apartment blocks over 18m. The new building regime is designed to be flexible, and to follow a proportionate, risk-based approach that keeps the scope of the regime under review by the new building safety regulator.

The building safety regulator will also have wide responsibilities for overseeing the performance of building control bodies and the safety of all buildings including identifying patterns of regulatory failure and making recommendations for improving standards. This will drive up continuous improvement in the performance of all buildings to ensure the safety of occupants.

We are working with Home Office to ensure the new regime aligns with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, known as the Fire Safety Order (FSO), which covers fire safety in business or other non-domestic premises including where vulnerable people live and sleep. We will ensure that the two regimes work cohesively as the scope of the regulator expands.