Tag: building safety

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Addressing the building safety crisis in the 10-year plan for housing

Let’s start with a simple statement of the problem. Around the country, between 9,000 and 12,000 medium or high rise buildings have fire safety problems with their external façade severe enough to pose a risk to life.

Of these, just 1,482 have completed works and just 5,025 have been formally identified. The identified buildings account for 273,000 individual homes, which means there are likely around 500,000 homes overall, which means something like 1.5m people sleep in blocks that might kill them in a fire.

Currently, we’re completing about 10 buildings a month which means that if we don’t speed up, we’ll finish the last building somewhere around 2100 (assuming the sea level rises don’t come for us first).

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And while we have some idea how to pay for these repairs (a messy combination of developers, taxpayers, freeholders and leaseholders), we don’t have anything approaching a financial strategy which matches the estimated £16.6bn price tag of the problem.

Our process of assessing buildings and working out what needs to be done is also deeply flawed, unregulated and currently the subject of predictable scandal.

This is a big problem, and demands a big strategy.

So far, the government has been unwilling to introduce big changes – sticking instead with the basics of the approach the preceding administration set in motion, albeit with some tweaks aimed to make it run faster.

This is not really good enough and represents (in my view) a classic embodiment of the sunken costs fallacy.

The building safety crisis is a complex and multifaceted one which evades a perfect or easy solution. But there are ways of approaching it which are less flawed and easier than the current mess.

The answer is to set up a system which offers three things the current one fails to: consistency, clear funding and control.

The current approach is inconsistent and unpredictable. The use of loose, bespoke guidance same building may be considered in need of remediation by one assessor, and cleared by another. The means of fixing the problem may also be different.

This causes an enormous amount of delay – because different parties fight over exactly what needs to be done to the building instead of just doing it.

A new approach would acknowledge a few simple facts. The first would be that we simply cannot fix every building. A combination of sloppy government guidance and industry malpractice means we have used combustible materials ubiquitously in the built environment for 40 years.

The government’s approach since the very early days of this crisis has been to say that building owners need to work out what to do based on professional assessment, instead of being told what to do by the state.

There is some logic behind this – all buildings are different and prescriptive rules can have messy, imperfect results.

But the reality is that the industry – with all its many conflicts of interest and incompetencies – has proved itself incapable of this task.

It is also true that while all buildings are different, most of them are also quite similar and what is a fire risk in Building A will also be a fire risk in Building B, C, D, E and F.

So we should have a basic, government-mandated system of scoring – with points added for factors like height, building occupancy, cladding material, extent of cladding, presence of combustible balconies and so on and taken off for sprinklers, fire alarms, second staircases and other features which reduce the risk. Score over a certain level, and you would need to bring the numbers down with the addition of risk mitigation – which may or may not involve full building regulation.

The next step is certainty of funding. Building remediation only really gets going when we have agreed how to pay for it. And the current bunfight over responsibility makes that very hard and very slow to define.

The answer is for Rachel Reeves to borrow the cash up front and over a long period of time.

But before someone screams the words “self-imposed fiscal rules” at their screen, she should also create a mechanism for getting it back – a long-term, statutory levy on companies across the various areas of the construction sector which have contributed to the mess.

Thanks to her tweaking of debt rules last autumn, this would actually give the government a pass to write the borrowing off.

And finally, control. In Victoria, Australia, a cladding taskforce has overseen and in some cases directly delivered the works to buildings. A regulator with powers to get a grip on the works, setting timescales and issuing fines for non-compliance, would force those who are delaying unreasonably to pull their fingers out.

Put all of these things together and you would have a system which focuses us on the most dangerous buildings, funds the work for them and gets it done. This does not need to be a process which drags on forever. But unless we take a new approach, it will be. 

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Ensuring resident safety: driving up property management standards

Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner confirmed the Government’s response and adoptions of the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report this week (Wednesday 26th February). Phase 2 of the report was a watershed moment, exposing systemic failures in tall residential building safety and outlining clear recommendations to prevent another tragedy. I was proud to be in the Chamber and place on record my support for the Government’s response and raise some questions on behalf of the construction industry.

This weekend, Labour politicians from across local and national government are gathering at the East Midlands and West Midlands Labour Conferences. While London has the highest concentration of tall buildings, it is important to highlight the challenge outside of the capital. Recent data shows that cities including Leicester, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, and Coventry all have between 11-50 buildings over 11 metres requiring remediation. Birmingham has the highest number outside of the London boroughs, with 201-400 buildings still awaiting safety work. This leaves many people living in high-rise blocks across the Midlands in danger in their homes.

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Since my election last year, I have worked with The Property Institute (TPI), which campaigns for the regulation of property managers to improve building safety. Many property managers have stepped up since Grenfell to protect residents by becoming key drivers of critical repairs and multi-million-pound remediation efforts, despite this not being within the original remit of their role. Many are professionally qualified and competent. However, the absence of regulation allows dangerously under-qualified operators to take on this vital role, putting residents at further risk – from both the homes in which they live and the people they trust to manage them.

Across the country, thousands remain stuck in unsafe homes, anxiously awaiting remediation. Government data shows that 70% of buildings over 11 metres identified with dangerous cladding have yet to be fully remediated. The Grenfell Inquiry exposed the failures of the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), which neglected fire risk assessments and basic maintenance, directly contributing to the tragic loss of life. While the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 addressed competency issues in the social housing sector, no equivalent legislation exists for the private sector, leaving a dangerous gap in oversight for those living in the private sector.

Astonishingly, anyone in the UK can become a residential property manager or start a managing agent company without formal qualifications or experience. These individuals oversee fire safety, building maintenance, insurance, and leaseholder finances—critical responsibilities that directly impact lives. Yet, without regulation, there is no system to ensure they are competent or held accountable when things go wrong.

Building management is an increasingly complex field requiring expertise in safety regulations, legal compliance, tenant rights, financial accountability, and environmental rules. Without mandatory qualifications and continuous professional development, we cannot expect property managers to navigate this evolving landscape effectively.

As Labour politicians meet this weekend, and with The Property Institute hosting an event on building safety at Labour’s East Midlands conference in Leicester, now is the time to push for change. Having worked in the construction industry before becoming an MP, I know that when gaps in regulation exist, lives are put at risk.

The sensible solution is the introduction of mandatory professional qualifications for property managers, backed by a strict code of practice and enforced by an independent regulator with legal authority. I’ll be lobbying for this to be included in the remit of the new ‘single Construction Regulator’ proposed in the Deputy PM’s speech this week. These critical changes would ensure that those managing residential buildings are both competent and accountable.

We owe this to the thousands of residents across the Midlands and beyond who continue to live in unsafe homes.

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Seven years after Grenfell: Labour must end the cladding scandal

Everyone deserves a safe home in which to live, work, care for their families and be able to make plans for their future. Yet, more than seven years after the Grenfell Tower fire, an estimated 600,000 people will go to bed tonight in homes that are still unsafe, and almost 3 million are trapped with unsellable homes, unable to move on with their lives, according to recent analysis by the Sunday Times. More than 15,000 residents have been ordered to leave their unsafe homes since Grenfell, and evacuations are on the rise.

Justice has been a long time coming for the bereaved, residents and survivors of Grenfell. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry will publish its Phase II report on 4th September, which is an important step in holding individuals and organisations to account for the loss of 72 innocent lives, but criminal trials are not expected to begin until at least 2027, ten years after the fire. Shockingly, the pace of removing cladding and other fire safety defects from flats across the country has been even slower – and at the current rate, it could take decades.

The previous Government rarely acknowledged the full scale of buildings affected, but estimates published in July show that 11,000 buildings are expected to require remediation works, including 2,414 managed by social housing providers. Despite this, the latest official statistics report that only 4,630 buildings are being actively monitored or “in programme.” Cladding has been removed from 1,350 buildings: just 12% of the estimated total. The government has committed £9.2bn of funding, but only £2.3bn (25%) has been spent so far.

Being “in negotiations” about remediation or having “plans in place” counts for little when dangerous cladding – or other construction defects that enable fire to spread rapidly – remain on people’s homes. Let’s not forget, these defects are defined as “life-critical.” Recent cladding fires, from Wembley to Valencia, have demonstrated why action remains so urgent.

When Grenfell survivors gave evidence to parliament a year after the fire, they warned MPs that :

“Grenfell 2 is in the post unless you act, and quickly… The Government need to take responsibility… There needs to be a plan, and it needs to be acted on right now.”

In Opposition, Labour agreed. Back in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer shared his plan to end the cladding scandal. He was adamant that Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, “could end this scandal right now if he wanted to. The Government must end the delay and give innocent homeowners the safety and security that they deserve.” Now, with a new Labour Government in power, there is no time to lose in getting a grip of this crisis.

Since day one, the pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament and to “get Britain building again” has been front and centre in Labour’s messaging. However, residents and leaseholders are still waiting anxiously to hear the same kind of commitment and clear deadline for making existing homes safe.

The Minister for Building Safety and Homelessness, Rushanara Ali, has written to property developers about her intention to convene a roundtable, to agree a plan for accelerating remediation. This is welcome, but what is needed is firm action to hold all parties to account, with clear deadlines and real consequences for delays. Otherwise, building profitable new homes will continue to take precedence over making existing homes safe, leaseholders and residents will remain trapped, and the market for flats will remain broken.

Labour must focus not just on the pace but also on the quality of remediation, ensuring that the scope of works is not being minimised by developer-commissioned assessments which leave combustible materials and other defects in place, because this leaves leaseholders and residents with higher risks, higher costs, and potentially unsellable homes forever.

The current developer remediation contract covers only 15% of the 11,000 buildings expected to require remedial work. Therefore, the same urgent focus must be applied to government-led remediation programmes, and a wider pool of developers, contractors and freeholders should be compelled to make all their buildings safe. That does not just mean external cladding; internal building safety defects must also be addressed, because buildings cannot be made half-safe.

The End Our Cladding Scandal campaign has published a manifesto, outlining five key focus areas for the new Government to finally end the crisis:

  • Establish clear and comprehensive risk assessment standards. Definitive, holistic, and risk-based guidance is essential for buildings of all heights and for both external and internal defects, so that safety assessments and the remediation required will be absolutely clear and consistent.
  • Make homes safe at the pace residents need and deserve. The pace of work must significantly accelerate from today. The government, construction industry and building owners must all be held to account to ensure a swift solution.
  • All leaseholders must be fully protected from the cost of remedying safety defects. The building safety crisis is the result of a decades-long collective failure by the construction industry and successive Governments that ignored warnings that the building regime was not fit for purpose. Every leaseholder is blameless and should have equal protection.
  • Protection from further financial penalties. The government must ensure leaseholders affected by this national scandal are not further penalised by an onerous mortgage lending process and exorbitant building insurance premiums.
  • Urgent action to give people their lives back – now. Those affected must be able to obtain accurate information about their homes, remediation work must be carried out with respect for residents, and mental health support must be available to those affected.

We cannot wait for Grenfell 2 before we act. The new government has an opportunity to step up and deliver a much fairer and faster end to the building safety crisis – and it is time to grasp the nettle.

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 SLL: Proposals for Housing Law Reform

The Society of Labour Lawyers (SLL) has produced a think-piece Proposals for housing law reform, containing ideas from the SLL’s housing law sub-group. Our focus is on detailed proposals for legal reform. We hope that it complements Labour Housing Group’s publication The Missing Solution: Council Housebuilding for 21st century.

SLL’ s Proposals can be read here:

https://societyoflabourlawyers.org.uk/2021/09/21/out-now-proposal-for-housing-law-reform/ .

In order to help councils purchase land and embark on significant council house building, we suggest that the Land Compensation Act (LCA) 1961 should be amended. Land could be bought at current value without additional ‘hope value’ (the ‘hope’ of estimated increased value if residential planning permission were to be granted to the landowner).

The current Empty Dwelling Management Order powers should be strengthened, so that empty properties in private ownership would be transferred to public ownership after they had stood empty for a certain number of years (one or two) (see Housing Act 2004).

Council tenancies should always be granted for life, so the power to grant flexible tenancies (fixed-term tenancies for a minimum period of two years) in the Localism Act 2011 should be repealed (not least because the Government has already announced its intention not to implement the subsequent legislation requiring flexible tenancies).

Right to Buy should be abolished in England, as it has been in Scotland and Wales, or at least very severely restricted. We call for substantial benefit reform by repealing the Bedroom Tax and benefit cap, linking Local Housing Allowance to the retail price index, Discretionary Housing Payments funded in full by government, and ending the two-child limit.

The SLL has been working with Labour’s front bench on building safety proposals. We propose that a Labour Government should follow Australia’s lead on fire safety. That would involve conducting a full audit of all residential multi-occupancy buildings regarding fire safety, assessing which buildings are the highest risk and need to be prioritised for remediation without delay, and funding remediation works in full, without reclaiming the costs from leaseholders.

Leaseholders would assign the right to sue those responsible for the defects to Government. The Limitation Act 1980 needs amendment to allow so that developers can be sued for building defects installed earlier than six years previously (the current position) or 15 years (as proposed in the Government’s Building Safety Bill).

We call for legislation so that those responsible for installing defective products can be traced, through a sometimes complex network of dissolved companies. Some costs could also be recouped by a levy on developers and product manufacturers.

We call for reforms in the area of home ownership, including a holistic review of housing costs so that home ownership becomes more affordable. The contributors support the Law Commission’s proposals to reform leasehold and make commonhold much more widely available.Specifically, planning legislation should provide that consent for new flat building would carry a legal presumption that units (including communal facilities and shops in the residential development) are held under a commonhold agreement, not leasehold.

We also call for wealth-based property taxation, through progressive council tax, and penalising owners of vacant properties (with the aim of those properties either being transferred to the public sector or available for private letting). We support London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s call for councils to buy back homes that were bought under right to buy.

In relation to the private rented sector, the SLL supports the commitment to abolishing ‘no fault’ evictions under Housing Act 1988 s21. Once section 21 possession claims are abolished, then private residential tenants will be assured tenants. In effect, therefore, there would be security of tenure in the private rented sector.

We propose that existing defences to section 21 possession claims should apply to all possession claims brought against private rented tenants, so that if the landlord has failed to comply with tenancy deposit regulations or gas safety or energy performance certificate requirements, or where possession proceedings are in response to a complaint about the condition of the property, possession cannot be ordered.

We also propose repealing the mandatory Ground 8 possession claim for assured tenants who have accrued eight weeks’ rent arrears. All grounds for possession concerning rent arrears should be discretionary, so that courts can consider the reasons for the arrears and the personal circumstances of the tenant. Along with security of tenure, Labour should introduce rent controls, with rents set by a locally based expert tribunal, taking into account the condition of the property as well as market scarcity. Labour should take steps to abolish all aspects of the ‘hostile environment’ discriminatory measures against migrants, including ending the right to rent.

The best way to reduce homelessness is to increase the supply of affordable houses, delivered through the social rented sector, and to invest in genuine homelessness prevention. With more affordable homes, the numbers of people sleeping rough or seeking homelessness help from local authorities should diminish. For those who do face the catastrophe of homelessness, the SLL proposals are that emergency accommodation should be provided to everyone who is homeless, and the tests of eligibility, priority need and ‘becoming homeless intentionally’ should be abolished.

While in emergency accommodation, everyone would receive an offer of suitable accommodation, and local authorities would be encouraged to use the Housing Firstmodel whereby the priority is to provide secure accommodation along with support to maintain the accommodation, budget etc. These proposals derive from Crisis’ Plan to End Homelessness. The punitive Vagrancy Act 1824 should be repealed and public spaces protection orders should not be used to prevent rough sleeping or begging.

None of these proposals for legal reform will work without effective, accessible legal remedies. SLL argues that dismantling the provisions of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is necessary, and that Labour’s future policy on legal services should be to restore and enhance a comprehensive system of legal aid advice and representation. The courts themselves have been beset by cuts, closures and fee increases, delaying justice and placing it further out of reach.

Labour will have to rebuild a well-functioning judicial system, and effective methods of alternative dispute resolution. Finally, there is a debate about a single-access housing court or tribunal. The authors of the SLL proposals prefer a re-invigorated county court system to a specialist housing tribunal. We emphasise that, whatever reforms are undertaken, civil justice must function as a level playing field and legal advice and representation must be adequately funded.

The proposals are put forward as personal contributions by their authors, for discussion and consideration by the Labour Party but also all those who are campaigning for better housing and a fairer justice system.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Liz Davies</span></strong>
Liz Davies

Liz Davies is a barrister specializing in housing and homelessness law. She is co-convenor of the Society of Labour Lawyers Housing Law Sub-Group.

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