Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what plans the Government has to improve the quality of building safety checks nationally.

The Building Safety Bill currently in the House of Lords marks the next step in the Government’s ongoing reforms to make sure everyone’s home is a place of safety. The Bill is part of a package of legislative changes to move things forward and make sure the problems Dame Judith Hackitt identified with the current building and fire safety regime are rectified. The package includes the measures in the Fire Safety Act 2021 and changes to the Fire Safety Order alongside the current Building Safety Bill.

The new regime established through the Building Safety Bill will:

• Establish a national Building Safety Regulator at the heart of our reformed building regulations and fire safety system. The Regulator will make buildings safer by enforcing a stringent new regulatory regime for high-rise residential and other in scope buildings, overseeing the safety and performance of all buildings, and increasing the competence of those working across the built environment.
• require those responsible for buildings when they are occupied to actively manage building risks, evidencing this through a new ‘safety case’ regime. This will make sure that proportionate steps are taken to deal with building risks in high-rise buildings through prevention, control, mitigation and ongoing management.
• It will also give a greater voice to residents of tall buildings to air their concerns and toughen sanctions against those who threaten their safety.

The Department has also taken steps to ensure that industry takes a proportionate approach in the assessment of the external walls of buildings. The government has supported the development of guidance which aims to provide risk proportionate guidance to competent assessors. This guidance (PAS 9980) provides new advice on how to assess the risk of fire via an external wall of an existing multi-storey, multi-occupied residential building. It sets out steps that can be taken to identify and assess risk factors as well as mitigation measures that might improve the risk rating of a building via a holistic and fact-based assessment of a building’s construction.