Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many residents have been displaced from their homes due to (a) building safety evacuations and (b) fires that have spread to more than one floor due to building safety defects since 15 June 2017.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Major decants are a local operational matter, and decisions on enforcement action are made by local regulators, local authorities and Fire and Rescue Services.
Where there are major decants, the department does offer support where appropriate, such as pressing building owners and developers to fulfil their obligations. Since December 2023 the department has assisted local regulators in preventing at least 800 residents from being decanted by identifying mitigating measures (such as a waking watch), allowing these residents to remain safely in their homes.
Asked by: Derek Thomas (Conservative - St Ives)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of (a) compliance with fire regulations by providers of small paying guest accommodation and (b) the numbers of fire assessors to ensure that compliance.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) is the main piece of fire safety legislation that applies to all non-domestic premises in England and Wales. The FSO places a legal duty on Responsible Persons (RPs) to undertake a fire risk assessment and put in place a suitable set of fire safety precautions to ensure the safety of those who use the premises.
Fire and Rescue Authorities are the main enforcement body for the FSO. Each FRA is required to deliver an independent annual risk-based inspection programme to check the compliance of premises in their area.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his planned timetable is for implementing (a) all outstanding recommendations and (b) the outstanding recommendations related to the safety of disabled residents in high-rise buildings in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase one report.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to delivering against the recommendations made in the Grenfell Tower Phase 1 report.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, delivering the majority of the recommendations to Government, have now come into force, and most recently we have published guidelines to the Fire and Rescue Service to support their role in evacuation, meeting a further Inquiry recommendation.
The remaining four recommendations to Government concern evacuation. Three of these are addressed in the proposals in the Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing Plus consultation, and for the fourth, concerning evacuation alert systems, this has been met for new high rise residential buildings, and the Home Office is undertaking further work regarding existing buildings, including developing an evidence base of existing evacuation alert systems.
Asked by: Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many deaths have been caused by dangerous or counterfeit e-bike chargers in each of the last nine years.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Office for Product Safety Standards (OPSS) is aware of three fatalities in 2022 and 11 fatalities in 2023 from fires related to e-bikes, lithium-ion batteries or chargers. This is drawn from data supplied by UK fire and rescue services, shared with OPSS. Incidents are complex as often multiple products are involved that can be safe and compliant when used individually, but become unsafe when used in combination.
Lithium-ion battery fires involving e-bikes can cause catastrophic damage to property, it is not always possible to identify whether products involved were unsafe, counterfeit or non-compliant given the damage they can sustain.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of consulting with fire safety stakeholders on the creation of UK-wide response standards in fire and rescue services.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Government supports the continuous improvement of fire and rescue services and established a sector led Fire Standards Board that develops professional standards for the sector. The suite of professional standards created by the Fire Standards Board includes strategic standards on operational preparedness and operational competence.
The Fire Standards Board consult widely on each of their standards prior to publication.
Decisions on how their resources, including staff, are best deployed to meet their core functions including crewing and meeting response times, is a matter for each fire and rescue authority, based on risks identified within local Community Risk Management Plans.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of granting powers to Police and Crime Commissioners to take over the governance of local fire and rescue services on fire (a) safety and (b) response times in (i) Essex, (ii) Northamptonshire, (iii) North Yorkshire and (iv) Staffordshire.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Part 1 of the PCC Review explored ways in which we can strengthen fire governance and accountability. The findings signalled strong support for a directly elected individual taking on fire functions to help simplify and strengthen the governance of fire and rescue services across England. This position was reaffirmed in the Fire Reform White Paper, in which we set out our ambition to transfer fire governance to a single elected individual wherever possible. In the Government response to the White Paper, published in September 2023, we set out our intention to proactively encourage and support voluntary governance transfers to PCCs or Mayors wherever possible.
The Home Office collects data on incidents attended by Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs), with this including fire incident and response time data for Essex, Northamptonshire, North Yorkshire and Staffordshire FRSs. This data is published in a variety of published data tables, available here: Fire statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to paragraph 45 of the Government response to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on Cladding: Progress of Remediation, CP 281, published on 3 September 2020, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking into direct ownership the freehold of a building for which access to (a) assess and (b) provide remediation is being prevented.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Building owners are responsible for remediating unsafe buildings and the government has made extensive funding available for them to do so. It is important that building owners fulfil their building safety responsibilities and where they do not that they are held to account. Where building owners are stalling, they can expect to be subject to enforcement action by a local authority, fire and rescue service or the Building Safety Regulator; we released a joint statement with key building safety bodies committing to this last year. Regulators have an extensive set of powers which allow them to compel building owners to assess and remediate their buildings.
The Fire Safety Act 2021 and Building Safety Act 2022 strengthen enforcement tools for regulators, including introducing remediation orders which are issued by the First-tier Tribunal. These boost regulators’ existing powers under the Housing Act 2004 and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Building owners who fail to comply with enforcement action can be subject to criminal penalties. The government has provided over £8 million in funding to local authorities to expand their enforcement teams.
We also fund the Joint Inspection Team (JIT), a multidisciplinary team of experts which supports local authorities with inspections and enforcement; the JIT currently supports over a third of all local authority high-rise building safety inspections in England.
Asked by: Lisa Nandy (Labour - Wigan)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department is taking steps to help protect firefighters from harmful fire contaminants.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The health and safety of firefighters is of paramount importance and emerging research indicating that they may be exposed to contaminants is concerning. The Home Office are commissioning a literature review of such research that will involve a comprehensive review of published literature on the risk contaminants pose to firefighters along with related decontamination protocols.
Fire and rescue authorities, as the employers, must take seriously their responsibility for the health and wellbeing of firefighters, they should be mindful of the emerging research in this area and take appropriate action to protect their workforce – including appropriate decontamination processes for equipment.
We are working closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council and partners across government to understand the potential risk and whether further action is needed.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help ensure the protective equipment supplied to fire-fighters is up to date.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Fire and Rescue Authorities are responsible for the health and safety of their employees.
It is for individual fire and rescue authorities, as employers with responsibility for health and wellbeing, to ensure that firefighters receive the appropriate equipment and training they need to safely respond to the wide range of incidents which they attend, based on their assessment of local risk. Research being commissioned on carcinogens.
Asked by: Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help prevent fires caused by (a) e-bikes, (b) conversion kits and (c) e-scooters.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office is promoting fire safety messages, through its Fire Kills campaign, to educate consumers on safe charging and storage of e-bikes and e-scooters in the home and to recommend that only professionals carry out conversions.
The advice, also published on FireEngland.uk, supports that issued by London Fire Brigade’s #ChargeSafe campaign. The Home Office has made these materials available to fire and rescue services to use in their local fire prevention activity.