Pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill Contents

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Introduction

Background

1.The intention behind the draft Building Safety Bill is to deliver on the Government’s commitment to reforming the building safety system made following the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. The fire, which killed 72 people, focused attention on the flaws in the regulation of building safety and the competence of the construction industry, in particular because of the speed at which the fire spread up the building. As the public inquiry later found, the rapid spread of the fire was caused by the presence of aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding on the external walls, which acted “as a source of fuel for the growing fire”.1 The inquiry also concluded that the building façade almost certainly did not comply with building regulations.2

2.In July 2017, the Government commissioned Dame Judith Hackitt, a former chair of the Health and Safety Executive, to lead a review of building regulations and fire safety and to make recommendations for strengthening the building safety regime. Dame Judith’s final report, which laid out a new regulatory framework for higher-risk residential buildings (HRRBs), found

a cultural issue across the sector, which can be described as a ‘race to the bottom’ caused either through ignorance, indifference, or because the system does not facilitate good practice. There is insufficient focus on delivering the best quality building possible, in order to ensure that residents are safe, and feel safe.3

3.In June 2019, the Government launched a consultation on proposals for reforming the building safety system, Building a Safer Future: proposals for reform of the building safety regulatory system,4 to which our Committee responded in our report, Building Regulations and Fire Safety.5 In April 2020, following the final report from the Expert Group on Structure of Guidance to the Building Regulations, the Government also published plans to review Approved Document B (the part of building regulations dealing with fire safety) with a view to fundamentally rethinking building design. We welcome this review, which goes beyond higher-risk buildings, and look forward to its conclusion. On 20 July 2020, the Government published the draft Bill, and on 29 July the Minister of State for Building Safety and Communities, Lord Stephen Greenhalgh, asked us to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny.

Structure of the draft Bill

4.The draft Bill has five parts. Part 1 provides an overview of the Bill. Part 2 establishes a new regulator, the Building Safety Regulator, within the HSE and defines both its general duties and functions and the scope of the regulatory regime for higher-risk buildings, though it provides for the meaning of “higher-risk building” to be prescribed in secondary legislation. Part 3 aims to improve industry competence by laying the groundwork for a new dutyholder regime during the design and construction phase of higher-risk buildings and by making changes to the building control profession.

5.Part 4 of the draft Bill continues the dutyholder regime into occupancy by establishing the roles of accountable person and building safety manager and makes provisions for improving resident engagement. It also allows for landlords to recover the cost of building safety measures through the imposition of a building safety charge on leaseholders. Part 5 provides for the regulation of construction products, for a new homes ombudsman scheme, for disciplinary orders against architects to be listed alongside their entries in the register of architects, and for the removal of the “democratic filter”, which requires social housing residents to refer complaints to a “designated person” or wait eight weeks before being able to access redress through the Housing Ombudsman.

6.Our report largely follows the structure of the draft Bill, but starts with a few general observations on some overarching themes, to which we turn in the next chapter. We have appended at the Annex a schedule of minor or technical deficiencies we found during scrutiny.

Our inquiry

7.In his letter on 29 July inviting our Committee to scrutinise the draft Bill, the Minister emphasised his intention to bring the final Bill before Parliament as soon as possible in 2021 and expressed his hope therefore that we would complete “in good time”. He also recommended that we invite the scrutiny of experts from the House of Lords, particularly Lord Kennedy, Lord Best and Lord Porter.6 Accordingly, we wrote to Lord Blencathra, Chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, on 28 September, seeking their assistance with our inquiry. We are grateful for the constructive way officials from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government engaged with us during the inquiry, in particular the Bill Manager, Amy Payne.

8.In addition, our inquiry benefited from written and oral submissions from a range of experts and stakeholders. We received 430 written submissions and heard oral evidence from 21 experts representing a range of interested parties, including the Government, the construction industry, the insurance industry, the fire and rescue service, leaseholders, the property management industry and the Health and Safety Executive. We are grateful to everyone who took the time to contribute to our inquiry.

9.We are particularly grateful to the many individual leaseholders who told us about the problems with their buildings, the emotional toll it was taking and their fears about some of the provisions in the Bill. We were unable in our report to refer directly to much of it, but we were moved by their evidence and used it to inform the chapter on leaseholders and the building safety charge.