Draft Building (Public Bodies and Higher-Risk Building Work) (England) Regulations 2023

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Monday 27th March 2023 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Building (Public Bodies and Higher-Risk Building Work) (England) Regulations 2023.

It is a pleasure to see you, Sir Robert, and to serve under your chairmanship. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, the Government are introducing a more stringent regulatory regime during design and construction, with the Building Safety Regulator becoming the sole building control authority for building works defined as higher risk. Under the current regime, there is an historical exemption available to public bodies where, if approved by the Government, they can obtain a partial or full exemption to the building control procedural requirements. The draft regulations will ensure that in future, public bodies will not be able to obtain an exemption to carry out building control on their own higher-risk building work. The Building Safety Regulator will instead carry that out for all higher-risk buildings, including those owned by public bodies.

The regulations are a small but important part of our ongoing reforms to improve the safety and standards of all buildings. First, the regulations remove the Minister’s ability to grant building control procedural exemptions to public bodies for higher-risk building work. In future, all higher-risk building work will be overseen by the Building Safety Regulator. The ability to grant exemptions for non-higher-risk building work is unaffected.

Secondly, the regulations require any public bodies with a partial exemption under section 54 of the Building Act 1984 to cancel their public body notice with the local authority if the building work becomes higher risk. Local authorities will also be required to cancel public body notices in the same circumstances. Currently, no public body is approved under this partial exemption system; therefore, the measures are being introduced for future use only, and they will not change existing arrangements. Only one public body has any type of exemption—the Metropolitan police—and separate regulations to be introduced later this year will change that exemption to apply only to non-higher-risk building work.

Thirdly, the regulations will allow the Building Safety Regulator to impose a fine of £7,500 on public bodies that have not cancelled their public body notice when building work becomes higher-risk building work. For the reasons outlined, I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s questions. I wrote down his first question, but I have lost it among my documents. Will he remind me of it?

[Matthew Pennycook]

It was about the impact assessment.

[Lee Rowley]

The position is that, because the public body notices are not being utilised and the use of them is therefore minimal, the impact of their usage or the future need for them will also be minimal. On the second point, I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman, in order not to detain the Committee any longer.

Question put and agreed to.