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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what progress his Department has made on providing transitional support to cover the costs of waking watch schemes during the covid-19 outbreak.

Interim measures such as waking watch should only ever be short term and are not a substitute for remediation. Lord Greenhalgh, the new Minister with responsibility for building safety, is investigating what can be done to reduce the cost of waking watch, and to ensure that waking watches, where they are required, can continue during the current Covid-19 restrictions.

We continue to take action to support remediation, including significant funding of £1 billion for non-ACM cladding remediation, on top of the existing £600 million for ACM remediation, so that work to make buildings safe can continue as quickly as possible.