Fire Safety Cladding: Heysmoor Heights — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: Housing
James Jacob Gilchrist Berry (Conservative, Centre-right): The ownership of property is of course subject to the public record. I suspect that the hon. Lady may be getting at the fact that even when the Land Registry has a name on the register, it is sometimes tied up with foreign companies in jurisdictions that do not have the same transparency rules that we have for our companies. I will absolutely ensure that my hon. Friend the Housing Minister presses for the answer to who the freehold owners are. On her point about asking the freehold owners to pay the bill, I hope that the hon. Lady will hear in the rest of my speech the approach the Government are going to take Before I deal specifically with the hugely important issue of the residents of Heysmoor Heights, I wish to discuss the wider debates we are having in Parliament this week about the terrible tragedy at Grenfell Tower, which the hon. Lady touched on. This is the first opportunity I have had to speak about those tragic events, and I wish to put on record my personal sorrow. The Government remain absolutely determined that this should never happen again. It should never have happened in the first place. I think everyone in the House would agree that we have a duty to work together to ensure that a tragedy on that scale is never repeated Following the fire, the Government’s first priority was quite rightly to help the families who were affected and enable them to rebuild their lives, while continuing to remember with great respect—as we have already today—the people who lost their lives in those tragic events The impact of the Grenfell fire is wide-reaching, and I can assure the House that the Government are absolutely determined to learn the lessons and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of residents now and in the future. Earlier today, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out how the Government continue to work with fire and rescue services, local authorities and landlords to identify high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding. That enables us to both ensure that interim measures are put in place with our partners and give building owners clear advice about what they need to do, over both short term and the longer term, to keep their residents safe To support that, we have appointed an expert panel to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of residents of high-rise buildings. Following its recommendations, the Government provided advice to building owners on the interim measures that they should put in place to ensure the safety of their residents. I note that the hon. Lady said that the ACM cladding has already been removed from the building as part of those interim measures. We swiftly identified social housing blocks and public buildings with unsafe cladding, and all the affected social sector buildings that we have identified now have these measures in place In parallel, we tested different combinations of cladding and insulation to see which of them meets the current building regulations guidance. We published consolidated advice in September confirming the results of those tests, together with further advice for building owners. At the same time, we asked Dame Judith Hackitt to undertake an independent review of building regulations, and we are taking forward all the recommendations for Government from her interim report and look forward to the statement tomorrow about the final report to which the hon. Lady referred We believe that we have identified all affected social housing blocks and public buildings. With regard to private sector buildings, which tonight’s debate is about, the Government have made their testing facilities available free of charge, and we continue to urge all building owners to submit samples for testing if they think that they may have unsafe cladding on their building. In addition, we wrote to local authorities in August asking them to identify privately owned buildings in their area with potentially unsafe cladding and reminding them that that was in line with their statutory duty to ensure that residents are kept safe. The majority of local authorities have recognised the urgency of that work and have provided relevant information to the Government. I wish to put it on the record that we are grateful for all the hard work that local authorities have done in this regard We have been in constant and close collaboration with local authorities ever since the Grenfell fire tragedy, but this is not a straightforward task, particularly in cases such as the one referred to by the hon. Lady where building owners either cannot be traced or are proving unresponsive. To support local authorities in this work, we announced in March a financial support package of £1 million to assist the most affected local authorities Our measures will also help local authorities to take enforcement action to ensure that hazards in residential buildings in their areas are remediated as quickly as possible. I can assure hon. Members that, as soon as we are notified of buildings with potentially unsafe cladding, we will work with the relevant local authority and the National Fire Chiefs Council to ensure that interim measures are put in place.