Fire Safety: Retirement Communities — House of Commons, 2021-11-09
Topic: Housing
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. We certainly want, through the changes that we are making, to improve the building control regime in local authorities around the country, and that is what we will achieve through the Building Safety Bill. I also draw his attention to the changes that we are making in the Bill to amend the Defective Premises Act 1972 to extend the period of retrospective action that people can take if they find their property to be defective. We are also including in that Bill a clause that will ensure that building owners or freeholders must take all reasonable steps to find ways of dealing with remediation, and exhaust those steps, before they pass on costs to the residents and leaseholders. I think those are two important steps in the Bill, which I hope will find support across the House. Our package of reforms will help to make sure that construction products placed on the market are safe and that the public can be confident that products, including those used in the construction of care homes, will perform as they are intended to. The safety of retirement homes under 18 metres will be overseen by the building safety regulator, as part of its responsibility to oversee the safety and performance of all buildings. The regulator will work with the construction industry and technical experts, commissioning research and conducting consultations where necessary to make recommendations to the Government for improving building regulations. By doing so, it will drive both a culture change in the sector, and improve the safety and performance of all buildings. It will also drive improvements in building safety by overseeing the performance of building control bodies, as I said to the right hon. Gentleman, through a robust professional and regulatory regime for both registered building control approvers and local authority building control departments It is vital that the fire safety regime for these buildings is comprehensive and is working as it should. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires those responsible to ensure that they regularly assess risks from fire to ensure they can take mitigating action to reduce the risk, so it is as low as reasonably practicable. This is not a one-off process or tick-box exercise, but one that requires the ongoing, day-to-day consideration and management of fire risks. That is especially important for the safety and wellbeing of residents of care homes, and other later life and specialised premises. The duties placed on building owners and responsible persons under the fire safety order will be further strengthened by clause 136 of the Building Safety Bill, which takes forward proposals to place a small number of additional duties on them. They include improving co-operation and information sharing, providing residents with relevant fire safety information and enforcing compliance through strengthening the standing of guidance. That will help with compliance and more effective enforcement action in the future—the sort of thing the right hon. Gentleman was talking about The Home Office also intends to bring forward new regulations that will implement the majority of the recommendations made by the Grenfell Tower inquiry in the phase 1 report, which require changes in the law. The measures will help to make all residential buildings safer by placing new duties on responsible persons, which will improve fire safety for their residents and assist fire and rescue services in planning for, and responding to, a fire We want to support people to stay safe in their homes. Fire and rescue services visit homes and offer person-centred fire safety advice, providing smoke alarms and other fire safety equipment where necessary. To support those physical visits, the National Fire Chiefs Council has created an online tool to allow residents to make informed self-assessment choices and be guided on any other steps they can take to improve their fire safety. The Government are also playing their part, working closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council and local fire and rescue services to deliver the long-running "Fire Kills" campaign. Through a mix of media advertising, partnership working and promotional activity, the campaign has helped to drive down the number of fires and fire- related fatalities to its current historic low levels. I know that there is a united desire across the House to ensure that those living in retirement communities feel safe in their homes, and I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for bringing these issues to our attention tonight. Debates such as this are incredibly important as we work together to protect all residents. I assure him and Members across the House that the Government remain committed to helping residents in what we know is a most challenging situation, because in doing so, we will ensure that there is public confidence in the sector—a sector that we are determined to grow, and we have a mutual interest in doing so—and bring about lasting change in an industry that will put its residents’ welfare first. I am grateful to him and I thank him for his attention Question put and agreed to.