Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with his counterparts in Australia on the Lacrose Tower fire in 2014.
I met with the former Premier of Victoria, the Hon. Ted Baillieu, on 22 August 2017. We discussed the fires that took place in high-rise buildings in and around Victoria in 2014. Mr Baillieu is now is leading a taskforce which has been established to investigate non-compliant cladding in Australia. We agreed to share learning from both the UK and Australian experiences.
Mr Baillieu has met Dame Judith Hackitt and he will be engaging with her Independent Review. Furthermore, my officials are in dialogue with the Australian Building Codes Board.