Building Safety Bill (Third sitting)

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

Q You recently published some guidance on the safety case system. How do you see that system operating in practice?

Peter Baker: We clearly will not know for certain until the Bill emerges from the parliamentary process but, as I say, we see this as a key step change in the regulatory regime, particularly in the occupation phase. It applies very clear responsibilities to the accountable person to manage the risk, and it leans very heavily on other major hazard industries and safety case regimes. In principle, the responsibility will be on the accountable person—the landlord, the building owner—to demonstrate to the regulator and other stakeholders, as part of a licensing and certification process, that they have identified the critical fire spread and structural risks in a building, that they have all the management systems that they need to manage those risks, and that, where they have identified gaps, they have a plan to fill them.

I also stress that this process is not just to satisfy the regulator and then to be put on a shelf. The safety case is going to be quite a fundamental part of a duty holder’s management system and of managing the risks associated with their building.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

Q This question is for Sarah Albon. Going back to Ian Byrne’s question about the Building Safety Regulator, what is the metric of success when it comes to embedding the BSR within the HSE? Given the aims of the Bill, how will the HSE ensure that, operationally, the transition is as smooth and effective as possible?

Sarah Albon: If I can come to the second of those questions first, I guess that ensuring that the transition is as smooth as possible is about planning, but it is also about recognising that there are various aspects to the Building Safety Regulator, and we can bring on board those different aspects at different stages. We are already ramping up the engagement that we have with industry, for example. We are starting to do some key work reaching out to residents and resident groups, so that we have greater engagement with them and really understand the range of issues and concerns that they have, and so that those relationships are well built before the Bill goes live. Of course, the planning gateway 1 process has already gone live, so we are able to create the team around that and learn from it.

We have done various structural things within HSE, leaning heavily on our existing construction team, which has years of experience of working with the construction industry, influencing the importance of change not just day to day on different building sites but at a senior key level across the industry, and engaging with key players to ensure that that happens.

I confess that I have completely forgotten the first part of your question, so could remind me what it was?

[Shaun Bailey]

Q What would be the measures of success for you?

Sarah Albon: As with anything else, there will obviously be some key measures of success on service delivery to those people who are trying to build and occupy buildings. You will be familiar with some of those from any other public service. That will be about the quality of the work we do and the speed at which we can turn things around, ensuring that we are not slowing things down, that people are still able to build high-quality buildings and to occupy them, and that we are giving the right kind of service.

Beyond those important day-to-day metrics, it will also be about looking back in a few years’ time and seeing that culture of safety in buildings as being as integral and as important to HSE as the culture of workplace safety that we have built over the years. Together with the board, we have already started to think about how we can ensure that there is as much emphasis on that aspect of the work as there is and has been for the past many decades on workplace health and safety.

[Shaun Bailey]

Does anyone else have anything to add to that comprehensive response?

Peter Baker: On the softer side of things, a measure of success for me, having had experience of introducing and improving our workplace health and safety regimes, is that engagement with the duty holders is absolutely key. They need to feel as though this is not being done to them but that they are engaged in and part of how this system is going to operate from day one. That is important. It is also crucial that residents feel that they are part of how this system is being developed and that we have engagement strategies associated with residents. We really need to build the confidence of residents in this system, and we have to see signs of that from a very early stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey]

Q Engagement with residents will be a key part of this, particularly for the accountable persons. I have at times seen some very good engagement models, where residents feel they are in a partnership with property management, but I have also seen some pretty horrendous ones where that engagement is not representative of residents. Given your different perspectives and the different way you come in on this, how do you both feel we can maximise the resident engagement model? What interventions do you think Government can bring in to try to do so, to ensure an effective partnership between residents, property managers and freeholders?

Councillor McCoy: Embedding a culture of the tenant’s or resident’s voice being heard is important. That is the key thing, and it is probably not addressed sufficiently in the Bill. We have heard feedback about ensuring that the tenant’s voice is there. The Government giving a strong line that the tenant’s voice should be heard is what the industry needs in order to listen. We think councils are reasonably good at doing that, although not all are perfect, but we want to protect and talk to our residents and tenants, and engagement is a key part of that. My view is that there should be a clear ambition and steer in the Bill that the tenant’s voice should be heard, so that any issues of fire safety raised are taken seriously, maybe with a formal process involved.

[Shaun Bailey]

Q Mr Bulmer, how do you feel we should enhance tenants’ representation?

Andrew Bulmer: You use the word maximise; I would use the word optimise. We are working with HSE on the customer engagement piece, and it is quite interesting. We have voices that say, “We want as much communication as possible,” and others that say, “Actually, we don’t want to be communicated with all the time. Just go and do your job.” Different audiences and different individuals will want communicating with in different ways, so I think the challenge for the industry is how we communicate in a way that meets the various needs of our customers.

If you look back at property management through the ages—I am going back many decades—a property manager was a servant of the landlord. The culture shift towards consumerism within the leasehold sector is now all but complete. Long since now, property managers very much understand that it is service charge payers who are paying for the service, and that they are the customers. That is a culture that is well embedded now in the majority of the industry. While we have seen examples of poor practice—like you, I have seen them myself—the direction of travel toward good practice is encouraging. I can certainly say that our members will be keen to understand the outcomes of the HSE project on customer engagement.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. The Committee will meet again at 2pm this afternoon, back in the Boothroyd Room, to continue taking oral evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)