Marie Rimmer
Main Page: Marie Rimmer (Labour - St Helens South and Whiston)Building Safety Bill (Third sitting)
Marie Rimmer Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Q
Sarah Albon: That is a very broad question. I will bring Peter in on some of the technical aspects of scope. It gives us a real opportunity to take a holistic approach to the management of safety in buildings, from the very beginning of the design phase, through building and into occupation. It is important to recognise that although there is rightly a lot of focus on the taller buildings that are in scope for the special gateway process and the safety case process that will go on once buildings are in occupation, there are many other aspects in the Bill around improving the competence of those who work in the various aspects of the industry and in oversight of that, and around the wider built environment, that will apply to all buildings and all professionals working across the industry. It gives the foundation for a real sea change in the improvement of safety in the built environment in this country.
Peter Baker: To add to that, if you take a step back and look at the findings from Dame Judith Hackitt’s review about poor culture, attitude and behaviour of the industry, the lack of accountability of individuals, the lack of resident engagement, and all the things that were found to be wrong with the system as it stands, the Bill covers off all those points and, in fact, goes further in a number of areas. I am fairly confident that the Bill, as currently structured, addresses all the key points that Dame Judith raised in her report.
Graham Russell: If I may add to that, the products that go into those buildings are the foundation, if you will, of the safety approach, culture and regulation that we have just heard described. It is our responsibility to make sure that those products are what they say they are and that they are properly labelled and traceable, and the Bill makes provision for that through the schedule and then through statutory instruments.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
Q
Sarah Albon: I think there is always a balance between what industry needs to do and what the overarching regulatory regime seeks to do. From my perspective, it is important, in addressing the cultural issues, that we recognise that, ultimately, it is not the regulator or Government who will lead to a sea change in behaviour, but industry. It is therefore important that the responsibility for driving improvements, and for ensuring that people have the right kind of competence and do the right thing, rests squarely with industry, as well as the ownership of safety within individual buildings resting squarely with the owners of the buildings who are responsible for safety within them. They are the only people on the ground who can, day in, day out, ensure that things are being managed properly and that people are competent and are appropriately fulfilling their duties and obligations under the law.
Peter Baker: I would add that it will be set out in the legislation that a building safety manager is required. As Sarah said, the key thing for me—we have seen this with other workplace health and safety requirements—is that, although the building safety manager will have an important role on a day-to-day basis in effecting the safety, engaging with residents and so on, the accountability for the accountable person who is ultimately responsible for that building is not inadvertently delegated to the building safety manager, so that the BSM effectively takes on the ownership of the risk. That should be firmly with the accountable person, because they are the individual or the company that has the resources and the capability to really manage the risk.
Graham Russell: This is not an area for me.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Peter Baker: Having a competency framework is really quite important for a lot of the safety-critical roles in the regime, for a number of reasons. One is to make sure that there is a consistent level of competence, performance and behaviour among the individuals who undertake a lot of those important roles. That is not just the building safety manager but the client representative, the contractors and everyone involved in the lifecycle of a building.
A framework is key to ensure that the important things are part of a person’s training and induction. You would never be able to set a series of requirements to cover every aspect of a job, so a framework is an important first step, but it also provides flexibility for duty holders to have a whole range of other roles associated with that building safety function.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Sarah Albon: There are a number of new roles, as well as a requirement for increased competency and a range of other existing roles, that thread right the way through the Bill. It is inevitable that there will be a significant focus on the need to get new people to join various professions and to have training and experience available to people. It would be unrealistic to suggest that it will be without problem in terms of training and getting new people. Having said that, there has been a lot of notice that the new functions are coming, and there has been a lot of focus already in the industry on the need to improve the overall safety of buildings and the regime.
There is no reason why owners of buildings and senior people working in the industry need to wait for the Bill to be finished before they start driving up the skills and competence of the people working for them. Fundamentally, this piece of legislation will put in a new framework that requires people to meet certain standards, but they can be working on that already. Certainly, in the engagement that Peter and other colleagues from the HSE and the Department have had with the industry, we have encouraged and pushed them to get on with it and start ensuring that they have the right degree of skills available to them, and they are thinking now about who they need to train and how they need to support their staff with a view to the Bill coming in.
Peter Baker: One thing I would add is that a lot of organisations in the social and the private sectors already have individuals and companies that help them support the management of their buildings. I do not necessarily see the BSM role as something very new and necessarily too daunting. It can be part of a transition from what currently happens. If organisations are managing the risks in their buildings well through their existing arrangements, it could be quite an easy transition to the building safety manager role. I would stress, as I said, that it is key for the BSM not to be seen as the duty holder and to own the risk—that should firmly be with the accountable person to ensure the buildings are safe.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Peter Baker: Absolutely. Dame Judith recognised the need for cultural shift, particularly in the design, build and refurbishment of new builds. There are a number of provisions in the Bill around the gateways and the design and build, and there is a strong emphasis on improving competence right across the built environment. It is important to remember that the Building Safety Regulator will not just regulate high-rise buildings but will have other functions of stimulating and encouraging competence right across the built environment, which is one element of improving the culture of the construction industry and the landlord and housing provider industry.
Graham Russell: I think your point about culture goes right across the sector. What we have seen in evidence given to the public inquiry on Grenfell Tower and in other contexts reveals that a cultural shift is required. The points that colleagues have made about responsibility having to sit with the industry applies as much to the industry of creating the construction products as it does to the building industry—it is one system and one sector. It is clear to me that we must address those cultural issues. Regulation is important as it provides a framework and a set of expectations, but it is behaviours that have to change. In that sense, what we are embarking on through the Bill, and the work that we are doing with our colleagues, is addressing that culture.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
Q
Sarah Albon: I will try to answer on those different aspects. The first question was whether HSE is the right home for the new regulator. Whenever the Government consider setting a new regulatory framework, they need to consider whether it would be appropriate to set up an entirely new body or if an existing body has the requisite skills and competence to deliver. When thinking about that, a number of different aspects will be in officials’ and Ministers’ heads: they will need to think about the landscape of the existing bodies, the work that the existing bodies have on and any impact of taking on new responsibilities. There is often an advantage to be had in terms of speed of set-up if an existing body is used, as well as efficiencies in some of basic support services, such as not needing a second HR function or finance team.
In the HSE, we have a lot of experience in dealing with hazards and helping duty holders to really think through and manage the risks that are present in their environment, always with the onus being on the owners of the risk to manage it. That will fit well with the ethos of this new legislation—the real ownership of risk needs to sit with the owners of the buildings and they need to be held to account to ensure that they keep their buildings safe at all stages, from design all the way through to occupancy.
In the HSE, we have a lot of competence in dealing with that and with holding duty holders to account, as well as many years of working closely with the building industry through our role as a workplace regulator and thinking about the risky environment for people who work in the construction trades. We already have a lot of relationships, and the organisation has had success in significantly improving the safety of workers in the construction industry. For all of those reasons, it is entirely understandable that the Government look to HSE to set up this new regulatory function, and it is a decision that has the strong support of my board and senior executive team.
On resourcing, it is a new function and we will look for new resources. All public sector organisations are about to go through a spending round. We are aware that there may be real constraints, but my experience so far in working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been that it has been able to prioritise this both in terms of the number of officials working on the Bill and directly. That is relevant to HSE in giving us the money that we need to establish the function and start working on it. It has been clear to me through the conversations that we have had with MHCLG officials about funding that this is a significant priority for Ministers and officials.
Do we have all of the competence that we need right now? We definitely need to build up more competence in fire risk assessment. We have started to do that: we have already recruited some people to assist us as gateway 1 went live, and we will continue to build on that level of expertise and recruit and train as the Bill goes through and we move into implementation.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Richard Silva: If you are referring to whether building owners should pay to fix the existing stock, a distinction should be drawn between the responsibility for maintaining the existing stock and the liability to pay; I covered the liability to pay in my previous answer. The responsibility should absolutely lie with the accountable person, under the new regime. Historically, the accountable person has been either the freeholder, where there is a two party lease, or, where the building is resident-controlled—as roughly two thirds of our portfolio is—the RMC or the RTM. In the future, when the Law Commission’s proposals are brought into legislation, it could be the commonhold association. They are responsible, with emphasis on the word “responsibility”, for the maintenance and repair of buildings. It is a complicated answer, but it does go to the Building Safety Bill, and the question of who will be accountable in the future.
It is an interesting debate. We have to ask ourselves whether members of an RMC or a commonhold association have time, expertise and willingness to do that work. Certainly, our research suggests that people do not want to do it, for a whole bunch of reasons. Forget criminal and civil liability—it is about having the time. People have other things to do. In the context of the Bill, among the wider Government reforms on leasehold, we need to focus on the fact that the role of the freeholder will become redundant. That is unambiguous from the leasehold reform agenda proposed. That means that the work done by my building safety team—it includes chartered fire engineers and surveyors—for the leaseholders and at no cost to them, save a modest ground rent, will become redundant. So this part of the Bill needs to be really carefully looked at. Who wants to do this role, absent the professional landlord?
Kieran Walker: I would be inclined to agree with Richard on the accountable persons piece, moving forward. If I understood the question correctly, you are really asking whether costs are fair and proportionate for historical issues and for historical defective buildings. It is very difficult to answer, if I am honest with you. As has been mentioned already this morning, you have some really good practice going on in the industry in terms of the developers and construction companies, and you have some culprits in there as well. We know that as a trade body and as an industry. Similarly, the manufacturing process and the manufacturing companies also have some culprits.
It is difficult, therefore, to nail down whether costs are fair and proportionate. Obviously, as of next year, our industry will feel the impact of the residential property developer tax, as well as the building safety levy. Time will tell whether that is fair and proportionate. Obviously, the building safety levy is subject to consultation at the moment. I think that closes in mid-October and we are busily compiling responses to it. Within that scenario, some companies, responsible persons and organisations will pay part of, some of or none of the building safety levy, while others will pay the full residential property developer tax as well.
Time will tell whether costs are fair and proportionate, but I certainly think that things are moving in the right direction in respect of the Bill itself and in terms of levying costs.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Richard Silva: It is a very good point. We engage with a lot of the managing agents who manage our blocks on a day-to-day basis and I think that there needs to be clarity on this point in the Bill. A separate regime for levying a charge to residents living in a block comes with cost and complexity; people need to understand what it is for.
It is a difficult one. There is service charge legislation in existence. There is a regime for it, with all of the reasonableness tests, information, budgeting, finalising of accounts and so on. I think that is probably quite a neat place for the building safety charge to become a specific sub-item within the overall service charge budget. Then, you are not really giving residents extra information—they are not understanding what the extra charge is really for—and it also helps to mask any chasm that might be in place between life-cycle maintenance and building safety maintenance, and where there is a crossover. It can become a bit ambiguous.
So long as the regime is clear, understood and, frankly, does not increase the financial burden on people living in their own homes, that is where the focus should be.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Richard Silva: The way that I read the Bill, the historical costs are, to be frank, left firmly at the door of the leaseholders, so it does not protect them at all. Again, this goes back to my first answer to Daisy Cooper: there are probably more equitable ways of trying to get the existing stock up to scratch.
Once all of the stock is where it should be, with a full suite of goals and a set of further information, with a clear and unambiguous accountable person and a building safety manager appointed—let us assume that it will take 10 or 15 years to get all of that infrastructure in place for existing stock—I think that the regulator’s role will cover all stock, whether existing or new build. But the transition period is really important—there is not enough clarity in the Bill, frankly.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Richard Silva: There is lack of detail at this stage. Clearly, the service charge legislation gives residents that means of redress and the ability to query and question stuff. If that is replicated in the building safety charge regime, wherever that sits ultimately, whether in this Bill or other existing legislation, hopefully that will be fit for purpose.
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
Q
Richard Silva: The Bill is an excellent framework in lots of different areas, but it is a framework. As Justin Bates said in his evidence last week, it is a good and admirable starting point but there are lots of areas, lots of limbs within the Bill, that, quite understandably, because we cannot foresee every situation, will need to be dealt with as specific areas are developed and understood, consultations undertaken, experts work with MHCLG officials, and so on, to bring precise details of policy forward. I am not an expert in the certification and qualifications arena, but you have heard from the previous panel and you had fire experts last week.
What I do know is that, in our business, meaningfully and more explicitly post Grenfell, but for longer than that— in our resident engagements, we interact with 90,000 residents every year at some level—we have put in place a specific and dedicated fire life safety team in HomeGround. In that team, there are chartered fire surveyors, ex-London Fire Brigade officers, building surveyors and a small legal team. Their role, in collaboration with our estates management team, is to work closely together.
Our estates management team will basically audit all the managing agents who are responsible for the day-to-day running of our blocks around the country. Where there are clearly some deficiencies in, for example, fire risk assessments or, frankly, poor stewardship by the managing agent—that happens in all industries—our fire life safety team will go in and work with the managing agent to put special measures in place to get that building fit for purpose. That comes at a cost. Some of these things, by the way, are just bad life-cycle maintenance stuff—things that should have been replaced five years ago. That is a legitimate cost for the residents who live there.
That team has been inundated over the past 18 months. We have been trying to secure funding from the building safety fund and the ACM cladding remediation fund, which are very welcome funding pools, to get the bigger picture and to get the higher-risk buildings fixed. We have gone out and hired the best people we can find—by the way, it is a tough market out there, because not a lot of people are qualified to do a lot of this stuff—but until there are more specific guidelines from the regulator and the regulatory regime on what the qualifications need to be, I do not know whether they are fully qualified or not.
Kieran Walker: I would reinforce the point that Richard has just made. As we have seen with the communal wall service—the EWS1 form and the cladding external wall system—and its evolution since July 2019, it has been difficult to get hold not only of people but of people who can then be insured to carry out things like EWS1 surveys or fire assessments in the first place. There is a real shortage of people out there who are able to undertake that. Again, to reinforce Richard’s point, it is quite ambiguous as to exactly what qualifications are needed/accepted if we are going to undertake the assessments.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Councillor McCoy: A lot of additional clarification is needed regarding the accountable person, the building safety manager and their responsibilities. A lot of detail is required. We need that detail and clarification because the industry, including councils in particular, needs to gear up to meet those responsibilities. Until they know what those responsibilities are, they cannot effectively gear up and commit the resources.
In particular, I would talk about the skills within building safety management. There is a lack of skills out there at the moment. There is a lack of resource out there at the moment. We cannot recruit as a council. My council cannot recruit to building control at the moment because people are not out there. Until we have clarification about what the skills are, and a framework for that, we cannot build up the capacity and skills needed. I would also flag that councils need the resources to be able to do that, because an awful lot of burdens are falling on councils.
Andrew Bulmer: I concur with the councillor. There is a lot of detail in the regulations, especially when it comes to the role of the building safety manager. We would like to see the regulations brought forward. They can either go in the Bill or be introduced promptly. Until then, we are operating a little one-handed. We are anxious to prepare and gear up for this, but without that information we are struggling.
That is one thing that is missing from the Bill; the other is protection for leaseholders from historical building safety defect costs. We understand that the Bill has to be written in a way that allows the reasonable costs of safety maintenance going forward to be recovered. That is fair and reasonable, but at the moment there is no protection for leaseholders from existing building safety failures that they did not cause.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Councillor McCoy: We have some concerns. You are right that timeliness is key. It reflects the points that I made earlier about having time for industry to gear up. There needs to be a proper, informed transition period. That is London Councils’ view. There needs to be a transition period that allows time for the capacity to be built. It needs to be fully funded, and there needs to be prioritisation within it. Obviously, we are very keen to see the safety measures implemented as soon as possible, but there needs to be a prioritisation of high-risk buildings in the meantime. That goes back to a holistic assessment of those buildings. We think that we need a transition period of about five years, and we need that clarity as soon as possible.
Andrew Bulmer: I am relatively unexercised about whether it is done through enabling legislation or written in from day one; what I am exercised about is getting the regulations delivered quickly. We are trying to prepare for the future regime. Dame Judith Hackitt called for a culture change and we, as an organisation, are driving that hard into our membership. They are receptive, and wish to adapt and move to the new regime as quickly as they can. It is difficult to prepare without the information, so I am less concerned about the mechanism; I am just concerned that we need to see the rules.
Ruth Cadbury
Q
Andrew Bulmer: I will lead with that one, Chair. I think that question was directed at me. I will come back to what needs to be in the Bill. The commentary behind this is that there is a clear and understandable push through the Law Commission and through the work being done by Government to vest the freehold or commonhold interest or the management of the development in the hands of the residents themselves, who thereby have democratic control over their development, and we find the logic of that compelling. The challenge is that it means those residents will be in charge of their own affairs. We can see in the example of Miami—the building that collapsed there—that the residents association was challenged in terms of its competence to manage the building safely. That does not mean that we abandon the adventure. I think we progress with it, but we progress with our eyes open and that means we have to support those directors.
I would like to see a support mechanism for directors who wish to actively manage their own affairs, so they can feel supported and get guidance where they need it. There would also need to be support for those directors in terms of quality assurance of their suppliers. For building safety managers, for example, it is important there is some form of a register of quality assurance. We would like to see the managing agents they will depend on being regulated as per Lord Best’s RoPA report.
In the Bill, there would need to be the option for directors to decide if they choose—purely optional—to appoint an external director to take on the role of the AP or principal accountable person. The danger is that lay directors will look at the risks involved, and they will all step back and not take up directorships. That is already happening and is already a significant problem.
Every property manager will tell you that it is difficult to get directors to come forward these days as the responsibilities become clear. When the responsibilities of the Building Safety Bill are made clear to those directors, we expect it will be difficult to get people to take up those responsibilities voluntarily, unpaid and without the necessary expertise or competence to fulfil them. The ability to appoint an external director would be likely to mean overriding the articles of association of the development and implying covenants into the leases to enable the external director to be paid for. It would require protections for leaseholders from a director who went rogue. These provisions would need to be in the Bill to enable leaseholders to outsource their responsibilities to a professional if they chose to do so.