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

Sean Woodcock Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

Q Have you seen problems where an assessor has been employed and is part of the firm that owns the building?

Jaclyn Mangaroo: I do not know of any particular cases of that. It is more when there is a pledged developer involved. I cannot comment specifically on any other cases.

Kate Henderson: From our members’ perspective, we have already been working really hard to deliver the duties that will become part of the Bill: for example, assessing buildings, mitigating risk, applying for funding and carrying out remediation works. We welcome the introduction of the remediation compliance plans as a way of demonstrating transparency and accountability to enforcing bodies, but also of demonstrating accountability to residents. Having clear plans and timelines will help ensure that expectations are managed, that any delays are addressed quickly, that enforcement action can be taken against bad actors and, in exceptional circumstances, that the backstop can be used to secure a route to remediation.

We welcome standardisation of the fire risk assessments of external walls methodology and the intention that every building be assessed and remediated to the same standard. As I have mentioned, the PAS 9980 methodology has already been used to access funding to the cladding safety scheme. I have also mentioned that we have mixed experience of assessors using PAS 9980 and that it can be subjective. Having a national audit system run by Homes England with a feedback loop will be really welcomed by the sector. I should also say that alongside auditing, as you have mentioned, having regulation of the competence of risk assessors as part of the introduction of a single construction regulator will help to ensure that recommendations are consistent and of good quality. That will provide assurance and transparency to all involved, particularly residents.

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

Q Kate, as you know, I worked in social housing for nearly 15 years before entering this place, including at the time that the Grenfell tragedy took place. I think it is fair to say that that was a big shock to the sector and led to a lot of soul-searching by organisations. My experience was that a really mixed range of expertise and capacity across the sector was shown in the response to that, let alone to any legislation coming down the pipeline. Are you confident that the sector is now in a position to implement this legislation, and is there more that would help in the implementation of this Bill?

Kate Henderson: There is nothing more important than residents’ safety, and I can assure you that our members have safety as their utmost priority and responsibility. We are already delivering a huge number of aspects of remediation work that will be covered by and become statutory duties in the Bill, and we welcome that. This legislation is only one piece of the response to the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. There are other pieces of legislation, but in addition to that, a huge part of this work is around culture. It is around learning, accountability and the relationship between residents and their landlords.

As part of that, in a couple of weeks’ time we will be launching a suite of tools for our members—a Grenfell Tower reflection toolkit. This is about learning lessons from the inquiry. It is a suite of resources for board members, executives, operational levels, large organisations and small organisations, making sure that this is not just about physically replacing cladding, but about listening and acting on the information being provided by residents, having appropriate assurances in place, and making it culturally at the heart of who we are as organisations.

On whether we have the capacity to deliver these new requirements, we are already doing a lot of it, but the capacity of the overall system is not us alone. We rely on expertise, fire risk assessors, contractors and the capacity of the Building Safety Regulator. A lot of work is happening on all those fronts, but everybody is going to have to work harder. We are going to need a lot more people and a lot more expertise. We are really pleased to see the leadership of the Building Safety Regulator drive forward the pace of assessments to gateway 2. We are seeing improvements there. That needs to continue, and we are committed to working with all involved, including Government and particularly residents.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Q This Bill intends to create a duty to co-operate between lots of organisations, including local authorities, fire and rescue and the Building Safety Regulator. If they all agree with the remediation plans and the work needed to make a building safe, that is fine, but witnesses this morning had concerns about who makes the final decision if all those organisations do not agree. What is your view? Is that a flaw in this Bill?

Kate Henderson: I am not sure that as the trade body, with our members being the regulated entity, we are best placed to answer that question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Gibson]

Q Would either of you have a view on whether the considerable flexibility in PAS 9980, and its term “tolerable”, has caused issues around the competent person scheme? Is part of the concern that people are not sure exactly what the criteria are for what they should and should not be doing? Is the term “tolerable” creating inconsistent standards in fire assessment, which is adding to the delays?

Sam Dumitriu: There is a trade-off between prescriptive and more flexible regulation. Sometimes you might like to have very clear rules, even if they err very far on the side of caution. I think that in the case of building safety, what we have had is a few pieces of Government guidance in the past that have probably been too tick box and restrictive, and that has caused problems. I think that the approach of PAS 9980 is the right one in focusing on proportionality. I also support the position in clause 44 on tolerable risk.

As mentioned, it is very important that we prioritise the types of remediation that happen, because there are very large constraints in terms of who can deliver and assess these projects. As a result, you need some way of making sure something is proportionate and remediation is not necessary in every case. It can be very costly and that work can also potentially push other projects back in the queue.

The area of policy that I have spent the most time focusing on in recent memory is the regulation of nuclear power, and Ben has also raised the Fingleton review. We have some very similar issues here because it is a question of “health and safety principles”, “reasonably practicable” and terms like that. You tend to see regulation that errs on the side of caution—which in safety is understandable—but there can be a tendency to do work that is not 100% necessary.

In the case of building safety, one consideration around external cladding is that you often might have a building owner who has financial interests in the cladding being remediated that are not solely safety related. There might be a different cladding material that requires less maintenance, is more resistant to weather or might make the building nicer. If there is a potential safety case, what you do not want is a situation where that cladding is changed even though we are pretty confident that, in the event of a fire, everyone can be safely evacuated—the building might experience some damage, but ultimately the people inside the building get out okay, which is what we really care about. My instinct is that we do not want to move to a system that requires more work being done over what is proportionate. It is really important when we look at all of these things.

I think that in the Building Safety Act, in many cases, we have erred on the side of regulation beyond what is proportionate, particularly around second staircase rules for buildings above 18 metres. I think that it could very easily be raised to 30 metres without providing any real risk to the public. We need to be very cautious about insisting on things beyond what is proportionate.

Ben Hopkinson: “Tolerable” seems to be the right standard in the Bill. There is a completely understandable drive for caution and safety within these complex issues. However, we have to be careful about proportionality. Already the Bill’s impact assessment shows that the costs of it are 10 times higher than the benefits. If you removed tolerability and mandated complete safety, how expensive would that be? Would we accidentally shut down new construction because we are burdening house builders with incredible asks on development capital?

There are a lot of competing issues here and tolerable seems to strike the right balance. Certainly, you want to make sure that the kind of buildings that are most unsafe are the ones that are remediated first, and removing a tolerable guideline risks buildings with only minor imperfections being treated exactly the same as the ones with the most dangerous cladding. I think that the Bill, as drafted, seems sensible and obviously we will look at the regulations as to how “tolerable” is actually defined.

[Sean Woodcock]

Q I want to come back to something that you said in response to Gareth Bacon. You said that we have made “good progress” on removing cladding. Of those buildings identified, 40% have had it completed while on 45% no work has started, with the remainder still having work done. That is really important, because it comes to the central point of why this Bill is here. Do you stand by that as good progress when 45% of buildings identified as having unsafe cladding have had no work started on them at all?

Ben Hopkinson: The fact is that there has been good progress—although it is not perfect and it is not done yet. I think that the Bill is useful in contributing to the remaining cases that are outstanding. Certainly, having 40% or 45% of homes completely remediated already is, I think, good progress being made. I did not say that it was done.

[Sean Woodcock]

Q No, you said, “good progress” and I was being very clear in quoting you. Do you think that if you were living in the 45% that have not been remediated you would regard it as good progress?

Ben Hopkinson: These kinds of tasks necessarily take time. It would be brilliant if you could snap your fingers and remediate all of the buildings really quickly. Unfortunately, there are inherent bottlenecks in capacity and skills—on which good progress has been made on resolving. However, it is not resolved completely yet. I suspect that with this Bill and more time, more buildings will be remediated.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Q You mentioned the sheer number of buildings that have been identified. As Sean Woodcock just pointed out, the progress seems to be very slow. Given that we are nine years on from Grenfell, to still have buildings where no work has started seems an outrage.

On centres, we heard this morning that Manchester, for example, has 129 buildings that have not been touched yet. That demonstrates that this is not just a London issue but a nationwide one. Equally, in London the building of high-rise properties has virtually come to a halt. In your opinion, is that because of the constraints that we are putting on them, to which this Bill will add, or is it because of the lack of skills? Alternatively, is it other costs or something else that we are not aware of? Will this Bill that we are considering end up causing further delays? I know that is a complicated question, but this is where we are coming from.

Sam Dumitriu: Ben, you published a paper on this yesterday.

Ben Hopkinson: Yes, I had a paper out two days ago about this.

It is important to remember that the macroeconomic conditions right now are not that favourable to housing. We have high build-cost inflation and high interest rates. That is a complete reversal of the situation 10 years ago. Yet, while we have a worsening macroeconomic environment, we are also seeing an increased burden on construction. Just in the past four or five years we have seen biodiversity net gain requirements, the residential property developer tax, the building safety levy, the second staircase requirement and the future home standard. All of those are burdens and all have a cost. Individually, they might be justified, but taken together we have seen a complete slowdown in new construction, especially in London, where over the past two years starts have been running at about 10% of the housing target.

These are the worst conditions for housebuilding in London since the second world war. We have to be honest about what new builds can be expected to pay for. It is not like there are infinite amounts that can be taken for Government priorities. In London specifically, my modelling found that 57% of the clearing price of a new build flat is downstream of Government policy. If we are building only 10% of the target, have a desperate housing shortage and new homes are inherently safer than older homes, we have to be realistic about the burdens that we are placing and work on easing them. I think that the Bill will not have that much of an impact on new builds—it is more about existing properties—so I am not really concerned about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Fortune]

I do not understand what the reluctance is.

Dame Judith Hackitt: Neither do I.

[Sean Woodcock]

Q Dame Judith, we are obviously here largely because of the Grenfell fire and its consequences. At the time, I was a local councillor and working in social housing. The very strong impression given to those of us wearing those hats, from the Government down, was that this was such a terrible tragedy that it could not be allowed to happen again, and that, although there would be trade-offs, we would make sure that lessons were learned and that remediation happened to prevent a repeat. We are now further away from that, nine and a half years on. Given your experience in Victoria and the question about culture, do you share my concern about whether that consensus is still there all the way down? Do you have any views on that? Is that at the root of the issue?

Dame Judith Hackitt: Is the question whether I think people are less committed to—

[Sean Woodcock]

My feeling at the time of the Grenfell disaster was that the view from the top down—from industry, Government, local authorities and so on—was that everything would be done, whatever the trade-offs, to ensure that this was sorted, the remediation happened and so on. As we get further away, there is a danger that the consensus and impetus have broken down slightly. Do you have any worries on that? Am I wrong to worry about that? Is it driving some of the issues?

Dame Judith Hackitt: You are absolutely right to worry about it, because we can look at many other industry sectors and see that, with the passage of time, the sense of urgency that follows a disaster tends to decay as you get further and further away from it. What we must never forget in this case is that we have no guarantee that this will not happen again.

The area where we are most at risk is with existing buildings because, as I have said, we have moved a long way. We have a new regime in place for new build, which I am confident sets new standards, and we have new rigour in place to ensure that buildings are built properly. We always knew that going back and addressing existing stock would be the challenge, but it would be unforgivable not to do that. Those are the buildings that affect existing residents the most, and they have been living with this for nearly 10 years.

[Noah Law]

Q I come back to the definition of “tolerable” and whether that should be written into the statute book. Is it your view that that should be the case?

Dame Judith Hackitt: Yes.