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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether his Department plans to provide funding required by (a) Hull City Council and (b) other councils to carry out fire safety tests on cladding on high-rise flats other than those which have aluminium composite material panels.

We are prioritising testing on buildings where people sleep overnight, which have Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding and are of a certain height. Where appropriate, organisations are working with the fire and rescue service to put in place precautionary safety

checks and measures.

Where work is necessary to ensure the fire safety of a building, we will ensure that lack of financial resources will not prevent them going ahead.

We have set up an expert panel to advise us on any immediate steps that should be taken to ensure fire safety, and we will act on those. The role of the expert panel and the advice already given following Grenfell is set out in a note published last week at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/explanatory-note-on-safety-checks-and-testing