Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding available through the Building Safety Fund to meet (a) current and (b) future demand.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
All eligible applications currently made to the Building Safety Fund will be funded. For any buildings that may have missed the original registration deadline we will be opening the next phase of the Building Safety Fund early this year and it will cover the costs of addressing fire safety risks caused by unsafe cladding on all eligible buildings.
It remains the building owner’s responsibility to address any fire safety issues in their buildings. Building owners should do all they can to make sure their buildings and residents are safe, without passing costs onto leaseholders or relying on taxpayer funding. In many cases, as we have seen for with the funding for the remediation of half of all private sector residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding, building owners and freeholders or the original developer can meet the costs of remediating unsafe cladding from their own resources, by claiming on insurance policies or warranties, or taking legal action. It is incumbent on them to pursue those avenues. Where building owners apply for funding they are required to demonstrate they have taken all reasonable steps to recover the costs of replacing the unsafe non-ACM cladding from those responsible through insurance claims, warranties, legal action etc.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what plans he has to evaluate the (a) effectiveness and (b) cost efficiency of the Building Safety Manager role.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Building Safety Manager role is considered critical in supporting Accountable Persons to ensure fire and structural safety is delivered and maintained.
To ensure a robust and consistent approach to assuring competence, we are sponsoring the British Standards Institution to create a suite of national competence standards for higher risk buildings. This will include the competence framework for the Building Safety Manager and other key roles.
The Principal Accountable Person will be responsible for appointing, and entering into a contract with, the Building Safety Manager. They will need to agree the extent of the role and must be satisfied in the Building Safety Manager’s capability to deliver it, this will provide an incentive for the Principal Accountable Person to ensure the role is delivered in an effective and cost efficient way. Where an individual or organisation is appointed as the Building Safety Manager, we expect professional residential management agents to supply much of the demand. This is in line with the vision set out by Dame Judith Hackitt.
The Building Safety Bill contains a requirement to review the legislation at least every 5 years, including the effectiveness of the Building Safety Regulator and the regulatory system for building safety.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the potential cost to the public purse of commissioning the British Standards Institution to create a competence framework for the Building Safety Manager role.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
We expect that the work to develop the Publicly Available Specification for the Building Safety Manager role will cost around £132,000 + VAT.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of (a) the training support and guidance that building safety managers will need and (b) the cost of that training support and guidance.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
To ensure a robust and consistent approach to assuring competence, we are sponsoring the British Standards Institution to create a suite of national competence standards for higher risk buildings. This will include the competence framework for the Building Safety Manager and other key roles
It is important that industry takes ownership of improving competence to ensure change is meaningful and sustained. Industry is best placed to ensure supply of Building Safety Managers can meet demand and is already leading the work to develop the competence framework for Building Safety Managers. We fully support these efforts
The Government intends to provide statutory guidance to support how the competence of the Building Safety Manager is assessed and assured. We expect that statutory guidance would provide examples of how the Building Safety Manager might meet the competence requirements, making reference to the Publicly Available Specification and, if sufficiently robust, accredited industry-run registers.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what plans he has to support building safety managers to access ongoing training to ensure their knowledge base is up to date.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
To ensure a robust and consistent approach to assuring competence, we are sponsoring the British Standards Institution to create a suite of national competence standards for higher risk buildings. This will include the competence framework for the Building Safety Manager and other key roles
It is important that industry takes ownership of improving competence to ensure change is meaningful and sustained. Industry is best placed to ensure supply of Building Safety Managers can meet demand and is already leading the work to develop the competence framework for Building Safety Managers. We fully support these efforts
The Government intends to provide statutory guidance to support how the competence of the Building Safety Manager is assessed and assured. We expect that statutory guidance would provide examples of how the Building Safety Manager might meet the competence requirements, making reference to the Publicly Available Specification and, if sufficiently robust, accredited industry-run registers.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what training and qualification requirements building safety managers will need.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
To ensure a robust and consistent approach to assuring competence, we are sponsoring the British Standards Institution to create a suite of national competence standards for higher risk buildings. This will include the competence framework for the Building Safety Manager and other key roles
It is important that industry takes ownership of improving competence to ensure change is meaningful and sustained. Industry is best placed to ensure supply of Building Safety Managers can meet demand and is already leading the work to develop the competence framework for Building Safety Managers. We fully support these efforts
The Government intends to provide statutory guidance to support how the competence of the Building Safety Manager is assessed and assured. We expect that statutory guidance would provide examples of how the Building Safety Manager might meet the competence requirements, making reference to the Publicly Available Specification and, if sufficiently robust, accredited industry-run registers.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether the Government is providing funding for leaseholders living in buildings that do not have combustible cladding but do have other fire safety defects, such as combustible insulation.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
Longstanding independent safety advice has been clear that unsafe cladding poses the greatest risk to buildings because it can act as a fuel to a fire. Our approach prioritises action on the risks of unsafe cladding – the costs for remediating this are high, and the risks posed by it are also high. Building owners and industry should make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders and we are introducing new measures that will legally require building owners to prove they have tried all routes to cover costs. The Government remains committed to protecting leaseholders from unaffordable costs. We are looking closely at this issue to make sure everything is being done to support leaseholders. The Building Safety Bill will bring about a fundamental change in both the regulatory framework for building safety and construction industry culture, creating a more accountable system.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether an EWS1 form is required for a building below 18 metres.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
An independent expert statement in July this year was clear that there is no systemic risk of fire in residential buildings under 18 metres and that EWS1s should not be required by lenders on buildings under 18 metres. The Government strongly supports this position and made this clear in its written statement of 21 July.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent progress his Department has made on its re-evaluation of the loan scheme for building under 18 metres.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
We are looking closely at this issue to make sure everything is being done to support leaseholders. This will be informed by new data from further survey work to understand the prevalence of unsafe cladding in medium rise buildings of 11-18 metres. The Government remains committed to protecting leaseholders from unaffordable costs. Further detail on the support offer for leaseholders in residential buildings of 11-18 metres will be released when all options have been fully considered.