Building Safety Bill

Written evidence submitted by the Fire Brigades Union (BSB49)

Introduction

This is the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) submission to the House of Commons Committee stage of the Building Safety Bill. The FBU is the democratic, professional voice of firefighters and other workers within fire and rescue services across the UK. The union represents the vast majority of wholetime (full-time) and retained (part-time, on-call) firefighters and fire control staff. This submission supplements the testimony Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, gave to the committee on 14 September 2021.

The FBU believes that the Building Safety Bill creates a more robust regulatory regime for higher risk homes in high rise residential buildings (HRRBs). The Hackitt review made a strong case for applying aspects of health and safety at work regulation and best practice from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to matters of building safety. The FBU supports imposing legal duties on the accountable person and their building safety manager, with enforcement and sanctions by the new Building Safety Regulator.

The Building Safety Bill rightly involves stricter regulation of a sector that has been subjected by successive governments to deregulation, privatisation and contracting out. The FBU believes these policies lie at the heart of the current building safety crises. This deregulation and austerity agenda is partly reversed by the Building Safety Bill, but significant elements of the old, failed regime remain intact. The FBU wants MPs to examine these issues and remedy them, either through this Bill or in other legislation.

Private approved inspectors

Regulation is imposed by governments and should be enforced by the public sector. This is to avoid the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise from self-regulation and private sector enforcement paid for by the owners and developers of construction projects. Enforcers must be independent and therefore should be entirely public sector bodies.

Since 1985, private approved inspectors have been permitted to function as an alternative to local authority building control in certain projects. This has been a disaster. Numerous complaints have been made about private approved inspectors. The "competition" has led to a race to the bottom on standards, while cutting the number of local authority building control officers.

The Bill renames private approved inspectors as "building control approvers". Although the Bill appears to allow only local authority building control to oversee work for buildings in scope of the new regime, the impact assessment (§35 page 14) states that:

the Government intends that registered building control approvers will play a significant role in the new regime for higher risk buildings.

The FBU opposes these private ‘inspectors’, which have undermined professional local authority building control and weakened building safety regulation. MPs should ensure that the private inspector role is abolished and all relevant work carried out by local authorities.

No to private fire inspectors

The Building Safety Bill will require fire and rescue authorities to assist the Building Safety Regulator. It gives the new regulator the power to direct fire authorities to assist its operations. At present fire authorities employ and train professional firefighters to carry out inspections (known as audits), provide advice and where necessary, enforce fire safety regulations.

The FBU is alarmed by the suggestion that the Building Safety Regulator would be permitted to seek private sector involvement if the fire authority cannot assist. The explanatory notes (§202 page 40-41, example) states:

It is expected that the Building Safety Regulator will work cooperatively with fire and rescue authorities and local authorities to secure support from them. If the local authority or fire and rescue authority in the area where the higher-risk building is located is unable to provide support, the Building Safety Regulator could seek support from other fire and rescue authorities and local authorities whose capability is less stretched, or from the private sector.

Private firms cannot be given licence to sign off fire safety matters on higher risk buildings. Building safety cannot become an opportunity for profiteering. MPs should ensure that fire safety inspections and work with the Building Safety Regulator on fire safety matters is carried out exclusively by professional firefighters.

Investment in public fire inspectors

The Bill enables the Building Safety Regulator to provide fire authorities with the appropriate funding to cover the costs of this activity. The Impact Assessment (§195, 198 page 41) states that "fire and rescue authorities will collectively see an increase in costs of between £10.8m and £15.7m" and require 100 to 140 full time equivalent staff. MPs should establish how these figures were calculated and clarify the extent of extra work required of fire authorities.

At present, there are insufficient fire safety inspectors after decades of cuts and increased workloads.

Number of staff in FRS competent to carry out fire safety enforcement activities, 31 March 2021

Short audits	690.48
Audits	1001.89
Serve enforcement notices	598.49
Serve prohibition notices	446.09

Home Office, FIRE 1204, FS10a (full time equivalent, England)

This means there are barely one thousand fire safety inspectors in England, and many of these are not currently trained to fully enforce fire safety regulations. Although these figures have risen slightly in recent years, they are still substantially lower than previously. Two decades ago there were almost twice the number of fire inspectors as today. [1] MPs should ensure there is investment in the public fire and rescue service, by recruiting and training sufficient local authority professional firefighters to carry out these duties.

Statutory advisory bodies

The Building Safety Bill will abolish the existing Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC) and replace it with a new Building Advisory Committee. It is not clear how this new body will be constituted or who will be represented on it.

Recent fire history shows the folly of getting this wrong. For decades, the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, made up of key stakeholders (including the FBU), was the statutory committee advising ministers. It was scrapped in 2004. Responsibility was given to the Chief Fire Officers’ Association, now called the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC). They permitted the light-touch, weak regulatory regime that led to the Grenfell Tower fire.

The Building Advisory Committee should be more representative. The role of representing the fire and rescue service within any new structures cannot be left solely to the NFCC. MPs should demand the government re-establish a statutory fire safety advisory body, with guaranteed representation for trade unions and residents on it, as well as a similar representation on the new committee.

High rise, higher risk

The Building Safety Bill applies to buildings at 18m or 7 storeys high. The Impact Assessment (§44 page 15) estimates that this will cover approximately 13,000 existing buildings and will grow by 500 buildings a year thereafter.

The FBU would like to see legislation that enables all residential buildings above 11m in height to be considered as HRRBs. The latest Home Office figures suggest that fire and rescue services know of approximately 100,000 purpose built flats 4 storeys or higher across England. This is double the estimates provided in previous years. [2] However there are foreseeable risks in flats of between 11 and 18 metres, which impact on residents and firefighters.

First, the means of escape via windows at 11 metres or higher is already perilous and may result in serious injury or death. Flats generally have far fewer routes to escape fire than houses. In flats, the means of escape is likely to be down an internal stairway, which itself can become crowded, smoky and hot. Generally exiting flats via the windows in a high rise residential building is not advisable.

Second, most fire appliances carry 13.5 metre ladders, which reach just four storeys. Fire and rescue services also have turntable ladders that can reach 30-40 metres, but these are not always deployed on the pre-determined attendance and are far fewer in number. Firefighters know that carrying out external rescues from above 11 metres is extremely challenging, even in good conditions. Two residents were rescued externally from the fifth floor of Grenfell Tower, but similar rescues were not possible for residents higher up the building.

Third, MHCLG provided evidence in its Building a Safer Future consultation, (June 2019) of elevated rates of fire in buildings above 11m in apartments/flats, care homes, education, houses of multiple occupation (HMOs), hospitals, hotels, prisons and sheltered housing. Similarly, the risks of fatalities and casualties are elevated above 11m in all the same categories. [3] MPs should also consider the examples of fires in high rise buildings of 11 metres or higher, such as the Cube in Bolton and Samuel Garside House in Barking, London, which would not come under the new regime if it starts at 18 metres.

The FBU believes MPs should seek finer grain data on these risks. The union is aware of some recent work by University of Leeds researchers, which the committee will find relevant to its deliberations. [4] Researchers found that residents of blocks of flats have a far higher probability of dying (more than double) or being injured (nearly fourfold) from a fire to their building than for residents of houses. They found a positive correlation between increased height and increased rates of fire with a fatality or casualty up to the 13th floor. Their findings underline the need for government-funded, robust research into fire safety matters and other risks.

The FBU also wants the new regime to apply to other multi-occupancy ‘institutional residential buildings’, particularly those where people sleep e.g. hospitals, care homes, hotels, prisons, halls of residence and boarding schools. Given the widespread use of cladding in recent years, and the uncertainty around its composition and flammability, the precautionary principle would suggest lower height thresholds for places where people live, whether it is their permanent home or temporary residence.

If the new regime is adopting a risk-based approach, then these premises – including those from 11 metres (four storeys) – should be included in its scope. The new building safety regime cannot be resources-driven, whereby height and premises are excluded from scope simply because there are "too many" buildings, which would be "too costly". The Grenfell Tower fire underlined the consequences of cost-cutting and deregulation. MPs should insist that if certain homes and other premises are at higher risk, then the resources are found to properly ensure people are safe in their homes.

The building safety crisis

The Building Safety Bill is a small step forward, but it does not resolve the overall building safety crisis across the UK. Levelling up will remain an empty promise if the hundreds of thousands of people with cladding on their homes are left to pick up the bill. The Bill and allied measures will remain a sticking plaster over a gaping wound unless the whole regime rebuild around need rather than profit.

The polluter pays principle should apply: those who clad these buildings and those who own the land and freehold, should pay for the remedy. It is not the fault of residents who bought or rented their homes that governments, the construction industry and landlords failed them. Single flat owners and tenants cannot be saddled with the bills. The wealthy builders, developers and owners have the greater ability to pay and the greatest responsibility for clearing up the mess they have made. Governments can help, but not to let wealthy vested interests off the hook.

The FBU therefore stands with people campaigning to make their homes safe. MPs must find answers to the immediate problems people face trying to stay safe in their own homes.

14 October 2021