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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he could clarify upon which expert authority the Permanent Secretary to his Department wrote to local authority chief executives and housing association chief executives on 22 June 2017 stating that Paragraph 12.7 of Approved Document Part B Volume 2 of 2013 does not just apply to thermal insulation within the external wall construction, but applies to any element of the cladding system, including, therefore, the core of the Aluminium Composite Material cladding.

The Permanent Secretary’s letter of 22 June 2017 set out the Department’s view of the guidance in section 12 of Volume 2 of Approved Document B.