Building Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2022-01-19
Topic: Housing
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I agree there is an anomaly, and I agree that we need consistency. I very much hope the Government give further thought to what might be done to achieve that objective The Opposition support new clause 23 and amendments 73 and 74, which derive from the Select Committee’s recommendations, and I hope the Minister will constructively respond to them in due course. On Government new clause 19 and new schedule 1, which will replace clauses 104 to 113, and various related amendments, we fully accept the need for special measures in cases where a given accountable person fails to discharge their duties under the new regime, including the appointment via an order secured by the regulator at the first-tier tribunal of a special measures manager who will take on the management of risk in a given building in such instances We also support the changes made to the special measures arrangements by new schedule 1, such as the change to enable the regulator to provide financial assistance to the special measures manager by way of loans or grants. However, we would be grateful if the Minister provided some clarification on those parts of the new schedule that allow for payments to be made by the accountable person to the special measures manager if expenses exceed what can be raised by way of the building safety charge. Will he give a commitment this afternoon that those additional payments will not be able to be charged to leaseholders Building height was debated extensively in Committee and warrants a brief mention in relation to this group of Government amendments, because the Bill’s arrangements for special measures still apply only to higher-risk buildings, defined as those of at least 18 metres in height or of at least seven storeys—I note that new clauses 24 and 25, in the name of the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), directly address this Eighteen metres has always been a crude and arbitrary threshold that fails adequately to reflect the complexity of fire risk. It is absolutely right and long overdue that the Government made it clear last week that 18 metres will no longer be the difference between whether an affected leaseholder is protected by the state from the costs of remediation or made to take on a forced loan and long-term debt, although leaseholders will still face ruinous costs for the remediation of buildings under 11 metres. That requirement will not be entirely resolved by the withdrawal of the January 2020 consolidated advice note, and we urge the Minister to ensure those people are also protected financially Leaving aside whether a more proportionate approach to fire safety risk results in a reduction in the number of medium-rise buildings that ultimately require remedial works, many of them will clearly remain designated as high risk and will therefore require remediation. Can the Minister confirm that it is the Government’s intention eventually to bring high-risk buildings under 18 metres into the purview of the regulator and the gateway system once the regime has been given a chance to bed in and deal with the most complex high-rise cases Lastly, amendment 29 will extend existing protections against forfeiture of a lease on the ground of non-payment of a service charge to non-payment of a building safety charge. We do not oppose this amendment as it rebalances, even if only marginally, the disparity in power between a landlord and leaseholder when it comes to the building safety charge. This directly relates to our previous debate on part 5. No provisions prohibiting forfeiture would be necessary if the House had accepted any amendment, whether it be new clause 3, new clause 13 or potential forthcoming Government amendments, that provides sufficiently robust legal protection for leaseholders in all circumstances. The difficulty of considering amendments on Report when other amendments that are likely to have a direct bearing on their operation, were they to be accepted, have not yet been tabled is that, if no amendments are made to provide legal protection for leaseholders against the costs of remediating historical defects, we would be concerned that amendment 29 could inadvertently incentivise freeholders to sue for unpaid building safety charges. I therefore ask the Minister and his officials to consider revising the amendment to make it clear that failure to pay a building safety charge can never be used as a basis for forfeiture, rather than merely regulating the process by which forfeiture takes place, as the amendment does in its present form.