Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential financial implications for leaseholders who lease a building built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
Answered by Lee Rowley
Individual building owners and managers continue to be responsible for health and safety, including responding to safety alerts such as RAAC.
Building owners must address safety risks of all kinds in their buildings through a risk-based, proportionate and evidence-based approach. On the 1 May 2019, the Standing Committee on Structural Safety issued a safety alert on the failure of RAAC planks. Local authorities, like other building owners, are advised to follow available professional guidance.
The Local Government Association has advised members to check whether any buildings in their estates have RAAC, to ensure it can be identified, assessed, and responded to accordingly. This is accessible on the LGA website and in line with the guidance from the Institution of Structural Engineers. If further buildings are identified as having suspected or confirmed RAAC, building owners and managers should follow the guidance to put appropriate mitigation in place.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has made a recent assessment of whether residential buildings contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC); and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Individual building owners and managers continue to be responsible for health and safety, including responding to safety alerts such as RAAC.
Building owners must address safety risks of all kinds in their buildings through a risk-based, proportionate and evidence-based approach. On the 1 May 2019, the Standing Committee on Structural Safety issued a safety alert on the failure of RAAC planks. Local authorities, like other building owners, are advised to follow available professional guidance.
The Local Government Association has advised members to check whether any buildings in their estates have RAAC, to ensure it can be identified, assessed, and responded to accordingly. This is accessible on the LGA website and in line with the guidance from the Institution of Structural Engineers. If further buildings are identified as having suspected or confirmed RAAC, building owners and managers should follow the guidance to put appropriate mitigation in place.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many calls were made to Homes England in (a) April, (b) May and (c) June 2023 on the Help to Buy Scheme.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
Homes England do not have published figures for how many calls were made to Homes England in (a) April, (b) May and (c) June 2023 on the Help to Buy Scheme.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many chartered fire engineers there are.
Answered by Lee Rowley
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the service provided by Lenvi to individuals enquiring about Help to Buy Equity Loans.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.
Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.
Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.
The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps she has taken to decrease the waiting time for individuals contacting Lenvi regarding Help to Buy Equity Loans.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.
Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.
Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.
The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pursuant to the Answer of 27 June 2023 to Question 190575, what is the cost to the public purse of the contract given to Lenvi to administer the service provision for the Help to Buy: Equity Loan Scheme.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.
Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.
Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.
The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what metrics his Department plans to use to measure the (a) value for money and (b) service provision of Lenvi in administrating the Help to Buy Equity Loan Scheme.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.
Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.
Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.
The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department has taken to manage the transfer of the service provision for the Help to Buy: Equity Loan Scheme from Target to Lenvi.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.
Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.
Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.
The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the time taken to remediate building safety faults on residential flats.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
As of 31 May 2023, a total of 15 residential buildings over 18 metres in height in the London Borough of Hounslow have been either identified as still having unsafe Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding awaiting removal or deemed eligible for the Building Safety Fund due to the presence of unsafe non-ACM cladding, but are yet to complete remediation. The Department does not hold data on the prevalence of external wall system life-safety fire risk in mid-rise residential buildings at local authority level.
Building safety faults can be wide ranging and varied in scope, and projects can vary considerably in the time taken to complete but we have now adapted the Building Safety Fund to make sure that works to address life safety fire risks are risk-driven, proportionate and progressed rapidly.
It is expected that the end-to-end process of remediating high-rise buildings will be faster in many cases. This is because interventions will be more tailored for individual projects, with resources focused on where they are needed, according to deliverability and risk to life.
The Department also launched a pilot scheme for affected medium-rise buildings in November, which alongside developer-led remediation will make sure there is a route to remediating all affected buildings in England over 11 metres.
The department has also provided over £8 million to support local authorities' enforcement action against building owners who are unacceptably delaying works to make their buildings safe.