Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (First sitting)

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sagal Abdi-Wali (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I declare that I am still a councillor in a local authority.

[The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)]

I declare that the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade are in my constituency and that I meet the fire commissioner.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as a volunteer director of the St Austell community land trust.

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[Gareth Bacon]

Q How do you think the Bill takes things forward? If it will not clarify who is going to take the lead, how does it advance the position?

Lord Roe: It gives us more powers to tackle the worst actors in the remediation landscape. It gives us the additional ability to call those people in and force them to make progress. That is the advantage of this legislation.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Q From your experience, looking at how this Bill is laid out and the work that you have been doing, what does persistent non-compliance look like?

Lord Roe: I am conscious of time, but it comes in all shapes and forms. It could be reluctance to devote the money required to an expensive specialist contracting model to get the work done, so you can hold things up at contract. It could be putting forward really poor, under-resourced design proposals. There are multiple different ways you can hold this process up. To be fair, lots of things make operating in this landscape complicated and hard. Perhaps I will come back to that as a principal answer: this is a good tool. It will not solve remediation, but that is not what it is intended for. A lot of stuff on the delivery side has to be improved, whether it is inside the regulator or the other agencies or out in industry. That will probably give us the greatest gain, but this is a very useful tool where people are not complying.

With the greatest respect, I hope the witnesses this afternoon bring up-to-date evidence. We have gone from a 30% approval rate and a median determination time on approvals into the gateway 2 system of over a year, which was completely unacceptable. Charlie and I were charged with trying to shift that. We publish data transparently every single month. We are now at a 92% rolling approval rate. We got the median determination time down to something in the region of 20 weeks, and we will reduce it further. I personally am not experiencing huge levels of non-compliance, to be fair to the industry. They have worked hard to improve the standard of applications and move things on, but this is a very difficult space to operate in—and where there are bad actors, this will be a good tool.

[Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)]

Q Mr Norris, will local authorities be able to carry out effective enforcement among the competing priorities and statutory duties, given that you are being given more powers and that we have just agreed that there is no hierarchy of control?

Mark Norris: Like the building safety regulator, the LGA welcomes the Bill. It is another tool in the toolbox. As MHCLG’s statistics already show, local authorities are out there doing enforcement now and have been for a number of years. Some 940 buildings are being inspected by councils under the Housing Act to take enforcement actions against some of the bad actors that Lord Roe referred to, supported by the Joint Inspection Team, which the Department funds the LGA to support. They have completed over 200 inspections so far.

The issue for us, which Lord Roe touched on, is capacity and resources to do that. Environmental health officers are in short supply—there is not a ready tree on which they grow to recruit them from. In terms of being able to do additional work, we already know that environmental health officers have a range of additional responsibilities. Recent legislation, including the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the social housing Act from 2023, includes a range of additional duties on local housing authorities within the housing space. Resourcing capacity in environmental health will be needed going forward to support councils in being able to do that work. We are fully up for the task, but need the resources and capacity to do that alongside everything else we are being asked to do, as you pointed out.

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[The Chair]

Minister?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I will let colleagues come in.

[James Asser]

Q Starting with a practical example, five tower blocks in my constituency—the deputy commissioner may be aware of the case—have been evacuated because of serious concerns about structural problems. A month in, we are surrounded by engineers, some people are still in the building, many are scattered and homeless, and businesses are unsure what they are doing.

We cannot answer what is actually wrong with the building, but everything stems from that in terms of whether we need to be clearing people out. In the first instance, everyone phoned the fire brigade, because they thought, “Hey, it’s not safe,” but it sits outside the fire brigade’s powers because it is not a fire issue; it is a structural one. In terms of your powers and where powers lie, where those responsible fail to take building safety seriously or to act when they should, what differences would clearer duties and stronger consequences make? Would additional powers in your remit be helpful in achieving that?

Dan Daly: As the previous panel talked about, the Bill provides a number of tools to a number of different regulators, and that is helpful and should be applauded. In terms of some of the unresolved questions and historical challenges that Lord Roe was talking about, the Bill will struggle to address some of the structural issues, and we will still find ourselves with the issue of who takes the lead in some circumstances. Because the issue falls back to one of public safety, fire and rescue services are often the agency that will stay around, even when we do not necessarily have an ability to affect the outcome, particularly when it comes to structural issues and issues of construction competence down the line. We will be there predominately to support residents and to try to protect their safety.

I am not sure whether it tackles the historical issues. They are some of the unresolved elements of competency throughout the system that we identified and were talking about three or even four years ago, when the Bill was first mooted. I am not sure whether it does enough to tackle those, but it does give some responsibility to regulators elsewhere, which does add value.

Spencer Sutcliff: The example in your constituency is somewhat symbolic of the wider building construction issues over the last few years. I have great sympathy for the impacted residents; it is a terrible situation for them. Dan Daly is correct that the London Fire Brigade has been drawn into this issue despite not having the powers, as it stands, to resolve it—although we naturally have responsibilities around emergency response and other contingency arrangements.

We welcome the Bill, and the work that we will be done to clarify the enforcing responsibilities of each responsible agency will be welcomed—we are a long way through that as it stands anyway, with various protocols and long-standing work and arrangements—but it will not necessarily resolve this particular issue, and I suspect that other unique challenges will show themselves over the years, like this one has more recently.

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[Rachel Blake]

Q Can you confirm which part of the partnership working agreement does that? Is it sending a copy to the Secretary of State? Does that mean that the Secretary of State is essentially put in the position of having to mediate if a partnership working agreement is not working? I am trying to get to what happens when agencies cannot agree.

Dan Daly: We have been saying collectively that what is in here at the minute does not do the work that we would like it to do. We would like that national co-ordination, and within that agreement, for there to be sign-up from partners on who owns the lead in certain circumstances, so it should not require someone to step in and mediate.

Without that agreement, there is more risk of delay as people debate inconsistently through local agreements, or you have a stand-off between agencies because there is no agreement in place. We can tackle that by moving the national agreement forward more quickly to remove the doubt and maybe answer the questions you are asking.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Q One of the key issues we found was with residential personal emergency evacuation plans. We intend to legislate to mandate them, taking into account fires and people with additional disabilities. What difference do you think assessing the inside of a resident’s own home beforehand would make to the effectiveness of a personal evacuation plan?

Spencer Sutcliff: Naturally, we are very supportive of RPEEPs and personal evacuation plans. However, our preference would be for the measure to go further and look at fire risk within homes, rather than just being focused on the escape routes.

Dan Daly: I think there are other benefits, one of which is about providing extra assurance on the plans that have been put in place. We know that fires start inside individual dwellings; they rarely start in the common parts of a building. There is also an opportunity to ensure the maintenance of some of the passive fire safety protection that is designed within a building—whether that is where people have access to common service risers, or where they have made adaptions to fire doors and things inside those properties. That is part of the building integrity overall.

[Gareth Bacon]

Q I want to follow on from Ms Blake’s question, which mirrors a concern of mine. In the event that regulators do not agree, who has the coercive power to make things happen? If I have understood you correctly, you think the Bill would be strengthened if it made it clear, in the event of a dispute resolution, who holds the ring.

Dan Daly: I think the partnership agreement I was talking about would set out very clearly, in certain circumstances, who was leading on what. At the moment, where that is not as clear as it could be, and where there is a reliance on separate entities coming up with these in quick order after the Bill is passed, that leads to the possibility of inconsistency in how they are done. Of course, they do not always come to those agreements quickly, because there will be different viewpoints, so I do not think it would be unhelpful to do that ahead of time.

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[Gareth Bacon]

Q You have basically mirrored some of the concerns that have come out in our panels so far this morning. One set of organisations that will be responsible for doing some of the work is local authorities, which we all know are extremely hard pressed at the moment. Does local government have sufficient capacity to carry out the enforcement measures required by the Bill?

Kate Green: Capacity is a real concern across the whole system, including for local authorities, as you rightly identify. We have welcomed, and Greater Manchester fire and rescue service, which I oversee on the mayor’s behalf, has welcomed the additional funding that we have received, but it will be important that all new burdens on local authorities are funded adequately and sustainably. The enforcement requirement—that regulatory role—is here to stay; it is not just a one-off, albeit that we clearly have a surge of activity and demand as we remediate a significant number of buildings in Greater Manchester, as part of the legacy of the appalling Grenfell Tower fire nearly 10 years ago.

I think it is important to recognise that particularly across fire safety enforcement and inspection we are struggling to recruit and, more significantly, to retain staff. There are real pressures and competition from private sector employers, who can offer much higher salaries. In Greater Manchester, across all 10 of our local authorities, we are giving high priority to protecting and supporting our residents, but there is no doubt that in times of considerable financial pressure on local government, as you identify, that is a challenge—and it is one that the Government will need to ensure is adequately resourced, so that local authorities and other statutory services can properly fulfil their responsibilities.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Q Good afternoon, Kate. Outside London, Greater Manchester has one of the higher caseloads of tall buildings with remediation issues. From what you have heard directly in the extensive work and engagement of Greater Manchester with your residents and leaseholders, where do you think the Bill will make the biggest difference to a number of those residents?

Kate Green: The first thing is to provide greater certainty and clarity about what is encompassed in the Government’s remediation commitments. We very much welcome the Bill and the funding already being made available to us to take steps to support our residents. It is useful to have those much more effective funding pathways.

We particularly welcomed the improvements in the funding process through the cladding safety scheme. I pay tribute to Homes England and Helen Fisher, whom I think you have heard from already this morning. That scheme has been a real game changer in enabling funding to begin to move into the system so that buildings can be remediated.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill on mitigations for residents who are exercising the right to manage their buildings or are in resident management companies, although we have concerns that there remains a risk of penalties and sanctions for those residents. We have made progress in Greater Manchester as a result of the attention that the Government have given to remediation of buildings with fire safety defects in recent years. According to MHCLG data, remediation has been completed for 152 buildings in Greater Manchester, but that means that we still have 181, as at quarter 4 last year, for which remediation is deemed outstanding. I would also point to the buildings that require remediation for other defects that will not be covered by the scope of this legislation.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Q In the Bill, we are placing a clear legal duty around the responsibility for remediating those buildings, which I hope you will welcome. In essence, there will be stronger penalties and consequences for those who fail to do that. From your work, what difference do you think will be made by the ability to levy civil fines, so that your residents do not have to go through a long-winded court process? What will that do for residents across Greater Manchester?

Kate Green: This is a helpful provision; it potentially gives regulators a timelier and more proportionate enforcement option, but we would not want that to arrive at a situation where commercial developers, who often have very deep pockets, considered that a financial penalty was an acceptable cost of delay and that they could afford to hold back, address other priorities that they might have and just pay the price of that. We really do see those penalties as a backstop to other effective enforcement action.

We would also draw attention to the need for the capacity to use that civil route to secure compliance. There will need to be investigation, evidence gathering, decision making and dealing with appeals, and all that will require sustainable long-term funding in to the system. A civil route is certainly welcome. However, our other concern is about buildings subject to the developer contract, where using a contractual route rather than a statutory basis to ensure compliance puts more hurdles, if you like, in the way of residents seeking to have their buildings remediated.

[Sarah Gibson]

Q Thank you, Ms Green, for your comments so far. I want to go back to something that Helen Fisher mentioned earlier. She raised concerns about PAS 9980 and the amount of relativity. Do you feel that, even if remediation is achieved, some of our leaseholders may be left feeling unsafe or paying higher insurance premiums through their external wall risk being assessed as “tolerable”, given the indefinability of that word?

Kate Green: Yes. Unfortunately, I did not hear Ms Fisher’s evidence this morning, but I do share those concerns. There will be an audit process, but that will be a dip sample, in a way; there will not be capacity for Homes England to audit every fire risk assessment that is undertaken. We will need to know that we have a robust audit process and that Homes England has the resources to carry that out.

We also need to be clear that where fire risks are deemed tolerable, there is an appropriate response from the insurance industry, which recognises that they must have full regard to that audit process based on the PAS 9980 framework that you referred to, and that, if fire risks are deemed tolerable, residents should not be penalised by higher insurance premiums, because effectively the insurance now has that assurance that the building can be insured cost-effectively.