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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the number of buildings in Hounslow that are awaiting the completion of fire safety remediation work.

As of 31 May 2023, a total of 15 residential buildings over 18 metres in height in the London Borough of Hounslow have been either identified as still having unsafe Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding awaiting removal or deemed eligible for the Building Safety Fund due to the presence of unsafe non-ACM cladding, but are yet to complete remediation. The Department does not hold data on the prevalence of external wall system life-safety fire risk in mid-rise residential buildings at local authority level.

Building safety faults can be wide ranging and varied in scope, and projects can vary considerably in the time taken to complete but we have now adapted the Building Safety Fund to make sure that works to address life safety fire risks are risk-driven, proportionate and progressed rapidly.

It is expected that the end-to-end process of remediating high-rise buildings will be faster in many cases. This is because interventions will be more tailored for individual projects, with resources focused on where they are needed, according to deliverability and risk to life.

The Department also launched a pilot scheme for affected medium-rise buildings in November, which alongside developer-led remediation will make sure there is a route to remediating all affected buildings in England over 11 metres.

The department has also provided over £8 million to support local authorities' enforcement action against building owners who are unacceptably delaying works to make their buildings safe.