Fire Safety Cladding: Heysmoor Heights

Debate between Jake Berry and Louise Ellman

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, and I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman)—Liverpool is my home city—for the extraordinary campaign she is fighting on behalf of the local residents she has the privilege to represent. She has asked written and oral parliamentary questions, and has now secured this important debate.

As the hon. Lady mentioned, my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing has arranged to speak to the agents of Heysmoor Heights’ freeholder, and I will certainly ask him to ask the agent who the freeholders are, because she has highlighted a very serious issue. We cannot have a situation in which the residents simply do not know who their superior landlord is. That would not have been acceptable to me in my old job as a property lawyer. I shall make sure that the Housing Minister presses very hard on that issue, and that if an answer is received, it is passed on to the hon. Lady so that she can forward it to her constituents.

[Mrs Ellman]

Does the Minister agree that it is outrageous that the residents are being asked to pay this bill but the private leaseholders do not know the freeholder’s identity? When the Housing Minister speaks to the freeholder’s agent, will he ask the freeholder to foot the bill?

[Jake Berry]

The ownership of property is of course subject to the public record. I suspect that the hon. Lady may be getting at the fact that even when the Land Registry has a name on the register, it is sometimes tied up with foreign companies in jurisdictions that do not have the same transparency rules that we have for our companies. I will absolutely ensure that my hon. Friend the Housing Minister presses for the answer to who the freehold owners are. On her point about asking the freehold owners to pay the bill, I hope that the hon. Lady will hear in the rest of my speech the approach the Government are going to take.

Before I deal specifically with the hugely important issue of the residents of Heysmoor Heights, I wish to discuss the wider debates we are having in Parliament this week about the terrible tragedy at Grenfell Tower, which the hon. Lady touched on. This is the first opportunity I have had to speak about those tragic events, and I wish to put on record my personal sorrow. The Government remain absolutely determined that this should never happen again. It should never have happened in the first place. I think everyone in the House would agree that we have a duty to work together to ensure that a tragedy on that scale is never repeated.

Following the fire, the Government’s first priority was quite rightly to help the families who were affected and enable them to rebuild their lives, while continuing to remember with great respect—as we have already today—the people who lost their lives in those tragic events.

The impact of the Grenfell fire is wide-reaching, and I can assure the House that the Government are absolutely determined to learn the lessons and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of residents now and in the future. Earlier today, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out how the Government continue to work with fire and rescue services, local authorities and landlords to identify high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding. That enables us to both ensure that interim measures are put in place with our partners and give building owners clear advice about what they need to do, over both short term and the longer term, to keep their residents safe.

To support that, we have appointed an expert panel to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of residents of high-rise buildings. Following its recommendations, the Government provided advice to building owners on the interim measures that they should put in place to ensure the safety of their residents. I note that the hon. Lady said that the ACM cladding has already been removed from the building as part of those interim measures. We swiftly identified social housing blocks and public buildings with unsafe cladding, and all the affected social sector buildings that we have identified now have these measures in place.

In parallel, we tested different combinations of cladding and insulation to see which of them meets the current building regulations guidance. We published consolidated advice in September confirming the results of those tests, together with further advice for building owners. At the same time, we asked Dame Judith Hackitt to undertake an independent review of building regulations, and we are taking forward all the recommendations for Government from her interim report and look forward to the statement tomorrow about the final report to which the hon. Lady referred.

We believe that we have identified all affected social housing blocks and public buildings. With regard to private sector buildings, which tonight’s debate is about, the Government have made their testing facilities available free of charge, and we continue to urge all building owners to submit samples for testing if they think that they may have unsafe cladding on their building.

In addition, we wrote to local authorities in August asking them to identify privately owned buildings in their area with potentially unsafe cladding and reminding them that that was in line with their statutory duty to ensure that residents are kept safe. The majority of local authorities have recognised the urgency of that work and have provided relevant information to the Government. I wish to put it on the record that we are grateful for all the hard work that local authorities have done in this regard.

We have been in constant and close collaboration with local authorities ever since the Grenfell fire tragedy, but this is not a straightforward task, particularly in cases such as the one referred to by the hon. Lady where building owners either cannot be traced or are proving unresponsive. To support local authorities in this work, we announced in March a financial support package of £1 million to assist the most affected local authorities.

Our measures will also help local authorities to take enforcement action to ensure that hazards in residential buildings in their areas are remediated as quickly as possible. I can assure hon. Members that, as soon as we are notified of buildings with potentially unsafe cladding, we will work with the relevant local authority and the National Fire Chiefs Council to ensure that interim measures are put in place.

[Mrs Ellman]

The Minister is giving some very important information, but he is not addressing the central issue of this debate. What will happen about the £18,000 bills that the private leaseholders at Heysmoor Heights are facing? What will the Government do about that?

[Jake Berry]

The hon. Lady referred to the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister today of £400 million of new Government funding to help local authorities and housing associations focus their efforts on removing ACM cladding. We have also provided other financial flexibilities for local authorities that need to undertake other essential fire safety work. As she has asked me very specifically to address the issue of the private sector, let me tell her that, in the private sector, we continue to urge those responsible to follow the lead set by the social sector and not to attempt to pass on the costs to residents. They can do that by meeting the costs themselves, or by looking at alternative routes such as insurance claim warranties and legal action.

Although I do not want to be drawn into the specifics of the insurance claim that is going on regarding Heysmoor Heights, I echo the hon. Lady’s call for Lloyd’s to get on and process that claim as quickly as possible. She mentioned the stage of the process that the claim has reached. As she correctly points out, it is the uncertainty—the £18,000 bill, albeit that it a potential bill at this point—hanging over the residents that is so unsettling for them. I commend Barratt for stepping into the breach and covering the remediation costs at Citiscape in Croydon. I am sure the Housing Minister will be making a point about the good behaviour of Barratt when he speaks to the agent of the Heysmoor Heights freeholder shortly.

Where building owners are seeking to pass on remediation costs to leaseholders, it is important that leaseholders can access specialist legal advice and understand their rights under leases, which are often long and complicated documents. It is absolutely correct that the Government have worked with the Leasehold Advisory Service—LEASE—to provide additional funding for independent, free, initial advice so that leaseholders are not only aware of their rights under the lease but are supported to understand the terms of these often complicated legal documents. LEASE continues to provide valuable support to affected leaseholders around the country. If the leaseholders at Heysmoor Heights have not done so already, I would encourage them to get in touch with the Leasehold Advisory Service to get some initial advice about their potential liability. The Secretary of State will also be holding a roundtable on the barriers to the remediation of buildings that have unsafe aluminium composite material cladding.

We are keeping the situation under review. I will specifically draw tonight’s debate to the attention of the Housing Minister. I will ask him to keep the residents of Heysmoor Heights informed, and to keep under review the progress not just of the insurance claim but of the wider question about where liability lies. We want to ensure that costs are not passed on to leaseholders, because they should not be. The hon. Lady quoted the Housing Minister, who said that there is a moral obligation not to pass those costs on to leaseholders. I absolutely agree with both him and the hon. Lady in that regard.

I hope that the points I have made this evening have reassured hon. Members just how seriously the Government are treating the issue of building safety. We will continue to make the case to building owners that we absolutely do not expect these costs to be passed on to the leaseholders of Heysmoor Heights or anywhere else. We will continue to provide support through LEASE to leaseholders who are faced with these unexpected bills, and we will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure that residents feel safe and secure in their homes. We will keep the situation under review. It is important to say that we have not ruled out any options at this stage.

As a proud son of Liverpool, I will finish by directly quoting the hon. Lady: what is good enough for Croydon is good enough for Liverpool and the residents of Heysmoor Heights.

Question put and agreed to.