Building Safety Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]]

Sadly, this Bill is deficient in many areas. It focuses on higher-risk buildings, currently defined as those over 18 metres, leaving the safety of residents in buildings under 18 metres unclear. Does today’s EWS1 announcement now mean that combustible cladding under 18 metres should be ignored?

The issue of funding is still not adequately addressed. As the Government well know, the building safety fund only covers unsafe cladding, yet 70% of buildings surveyed have non-cladding fire and safety defects. Providing cladding remediation funding for buildings over 18 metres, yet forcing leaseholders in buildings under 18 metres to pay, is simply unjust. As Inside Housing has previously reported, even the minority of leaseholders who could apply for loans potentially face waiting for years.

As for social landlords, the National Housing Federation has stated that, “Social housing providers will be forced to draw money from improving tenants homes in communities to fund remediation.” This is staggering.

To address these inequities, the Government plan simply to extend limitation periods to 15 years, but that will still require leaseholders and social landlords to stump up the initial cost themselves, if they do not qualify for the building safety fund. Legal processes for the recovery of such funds could take years and be very costly, if the developers and contractors even still exist.

This proposal would not help leaseholders in my constituency at Transport House, who face bills of more than £100,000 each, as they fall shy of the 15-year period, and nor would it help the tenants and residents of Sovereign Point.

Aside from the unsafe conditions such residents are forced to live in every day, the mental strain takes its toll. In a survey by UK Cladding Action Group, 90% of leaseholders said their mental health has deteriorated and a fifth—a fifth—have had thoughts of suicide and self-harm.

Let us be clear: the only way to protect both leaseholders and tenants from the unfair costs of the crisis they did not cause is for the Government to provide upfront remediation funding, then recoup the cost from those responsible for those safety defects. As we have heard, they managed to do that in Australia, so this Government can manage to do it here.