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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 6 February 2020 to Question 11599 on Buildings: Insulation, whether the Government has plans to mandate building owners to proactively share information on cladding; and what discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on including that step in the forthcoming Bill on fire safety.

The Home Office will bring forward legislation shortly to put beyond doubt that building owners and managers of all multi-occupied residential buildings must assess the risks from cladding and front doors to individual flats under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. This legislation will:

• require building owners to review their fire risk assessments to comprehensively cover all common parts of these buildings.
• affirm that fire and rescue services can take appropriate enforcement action, in particular supporting the remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding in high rise buildings
• provide the firm foundation required for taking forward recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase One report (accepted in principle by the Government in October 2019), which called for new legal duties on building owners for high-rise residential buildings around inspection and information sharing with Fire and Rescue Authorities. A consultation on Home Office proposals is due to be issued in the spring.

Additionally, the forthcoming Building Safety Bill will put a requirement on dutyholders to ensure accurate and up-to-date building safety information is available and accessible to those who need it. A Mandatory Occurrence Reporting system will be established by the Building Safety Regulator, and dutyholders will be required to report any structural safety or fire safety related event which is perceived by them to represent a significant risk to life, in buildings within the scope of the new regime.