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, if he will make an estimate of the average time taken for his Department to respond to leaseholder correspondence on building safety matters in 2023.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) places great importance on the effective and timely handling of correspondence. Although given the volume and complexity of some of the cases being received it does often take time to work through those cases.
As per the Cabinet Office’s Guide to Handling Correspondence on GOV.UK, response times are measured against a 20-working day target deadline. We, therefore, do not collect data on the average length of time to respond to correspondence on specific policy issues.
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 clause 18.2(B) of the Developer self-remediation contract, published on 30 January 2023, what the maximum time permitted is for a developer to delay commencement of works while they use reasonable endeavours to recover costs from other joint venture partners.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
No developer has provided the evidence required by the joint venture clause to show that they are less than 50% responsible for any of their listed buildings, so all developers are liable for 100% of the costs of remediating the relevant buildings. Developers are obligated to remediate buildings covered by the contract as soon as they are able.
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 buildings with life-critical fire-safety defects are excluded from the developer self-remediation terms because a signatory to the developer contract is a joint venture partner who is entitled to less than 50% of the economic return from a building.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
No developer has provided the evidence required by the joint venture clause to show that they are less than 50% responsible for any of their listed buildings, so all developers are liable for 100% of the costs of remediating the relevant buildings. Developers are obligated to remediate buildings covered by the contract as soon as they are able.
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 his Department's Building Safety Remediation: monthly data release, updated on 26 March 2024, for how many and what proportion of social housing buildings where works have (a) started and (b) completed, the source of remediation funding is (i) the Registered Provider, (ii) Government funding and (iii) developer funding.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The data we published in March identified 1,952 buildings in the social sector requiring cladding remediation. Of those, 204 buildings (10%) were reported to have completed works and 525 buildings (27%) were reported to have started works.
Government has funded works in 144 social housing buildings through the Social Sector Cladding Remediation Fund (135 completed and nine underway), 167 buildings through the Building Safety Fund (50 completed and 56 underway), and 36 buildings in the recently launched Cladding Safety Scheme. Buildings may appear in more than one fund.
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, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2023 to Question 3014 on Building Regulations: Fire Prevention, what recent progress his Department has made on the property protection workstream.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The Technical Review of Approved Document B was published on 6 June 2022. Research on the property protection workstream has completed. Government will consider findings, then publish the research and an update on the workstream in due course.
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, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of providing developers participating in the self-remediation scheme with a list of firms from which the Cladding Safety Scheme will accept Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls assessments.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The developer remediation contract requires that relevant assessors are suitably experienced, qualified, independent and competent. The department also requires the developer and the assessor to sign statements confirming that they are separate financial entities, in line with guidance issued by authorities including RICS, the International Arbitration Board, the International Bar Association and ISO/IEC 17020:2012 Conformity assessment.
The department does not recommend a list of assessors to developers. The British Standards Institution’s PAS 9980 standard and the developer remediation contract make clear that relevant assessors must meet the required standard, and the department regularly commissions independent audits of assessments obtained by developers to make sure that those standards have been met.
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, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that risk assessors commissioned by participant developers in the self-remediation scheme are (a) independent and (b) not reliant on one developer for their entire income.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The developer remediation contract requires that relevant assessors are suitably experienced, qualified, independent and competent. The department also requires the developer and the assessor to sign statements confirming that they are separate financial entities, in line with guidance issued by authorities including RICS, the International Arbitration Board, the International Bar Association and ISO/IEC 17020:2012 Conformity assessment.
The department does not recommend a list of assessors to developers. The British Standards Institution’s PAS 9980 standard and the developer remediation contract make clear that relevant assessors must meet the required standard, and the department regularly commissions independent audits of assessments obtained by developers to make sure that those standards have been met.
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 the answers to Question 101 to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on 21 September 2020 on Pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill on 21 September 2020, HC 466, what data his Department holds on the number of buildings where the NHBC validated the claims for major fire safety remediation works.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Data on Building Safety Remediation progress is published on gov.uk. The department does not hold data on the number of buildings requiring remediation for life-critical fire-safety defects that were approved by building control provided by NHBC, other private Approved Inspectors and Local Authority Building Control, or on the number of buildings where the NHBC validated the claims for major fire safety remediation works.
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, what information his Department holds on the number of buildings requiring remediation for life-critical fire-safety defects that were approved by building control provided by (a) NHBC, (b) other private Approved Inspectors and (c) Local Authority Building Control.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Data on Building Safety Remediation progress is published on gov.uk. The department does not hold data on the number of buildings requiring remediation for life-critical fire-safety defects that were approved by building control provided by NHBC, other private Approved Inspectors and Local Authority Building Control, or on the number of buildings where the NHBC validated the claims for major fire safety remediation works.
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, whether he plans to provide cladding remediation funding for (a) leaseholders, (b) shared ownership leaseholders and (c) freeholders who purchased their home under the Right to Buy scheme in timber-frame properties with UPVC cladding.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
We are aware of the action being taken by Barnet Council and continue to engage closely with them on the steps they are taking following the Moss Hall Grove fire in June 2023. Department officials met with Barnet Council representatives on 10 April and will continue to discuss with them.