Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of delays to post-Grenfell fire safety works on the level of costs incurred by (a) the London Fire Brigade and (b) other local fire authorities.

The Government is clear that building safety is the responsibility of building owners. To help increase the pace of remediation, the Government has made £5 billion of taxpayer funding available for the remediation of unsafe cladding on high rise residential buildings.

Across 2020/21 and 2021/22, the Government has also allocated around £50m in additional taxpayer funding to address the fire safety issues that arose from the Grenfell Tower fire. The majority of this funding has been allocated to FRAs and the NFCC to:

• strengthen protection capacity and capability;
• deliver the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 operational recommendations;
• deliver the Building Risk Review programme; and establish a central strategic leadership hub

Decisions on how to allocate their resources to deliver their statutory duties most effectively is a matter for individual Fire and Rescue Authorities, based on their assessment of local risk.

Overall fire and rescue authorities will receive around £2.3 billion in 2021/22. Standalone Fire and Rescue Authorities will see an increase in core spending power of 2.6 per cent in cash terms in 2021/22 compared to 2020/21.

The London Fire Brigade is part of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and it is a matter for the Mayor to set the budget for the GLA’s functional bodies, including the London Fire Commissioner.

The total resource reserves held by standalone fire and rescue authorities at March 2019 was £538m.This is an increase of £4.7m or 1% compared with March 2015 and is equivalent to 39% of their core spending power.