The LGA has a set of core asks around the Building Safety Bill. These are addressed in order of priority below.
1. We ask that the Government draws a distinction between developers and local authorities to ensure Housing Revenue Accounts (HRAs) are not forced to choose between remediation and essential services.
- On 14 February 2022, the Government tabled a set of amendments to the Bill that aim to make industry pay for some building safety remediation costs. The LGA has long argued that industry must pay, not leaseholders. The amendments mean that freeholders will meet some of the costs of non-cladding building safety issues in buildings over 11 metres, while leaseholders will not pay for cladding costs in buildings over 11 metres.
- However, the Government’s amendments fail to provide any new assistance for social landlords facing building safety costs and could leave councils liable for the costs of buildings merely because they are on council land.
- The Government has made large sums available to remediate dangerous cladding on buildings over 18 metres. However, this money is only available to social housing providers in the limited case of ACM cladding or to alleviate costs that would otherwise be passed on to leaseholders. The Government must commit to covering the remediation costs of social landlords. Failure to do so will leave the housing revenue account exposed, limiting councils’ ability to provide homes for those most in need and to improve social housing.
- The LGA has separate concerns about the Government’s failure to draw a distinction between councils and developers in relation to this Bill. The Bill introduces a new levy on developers, which the LGA supports. Amendments have extended the Levy to apply to all new residential development (previously it only covered new residential buildings over 18 metres).
- However, imposing this levy on councils means council tenants will be subsidising the failures of private developers and paying the cost both of remediating council housing and private housing. The LGA worked with MPs to table amendments in the Commons to remedy this and has done the same to support Peers at Committee Stage in Lords.
- The key role of local government is to serve communities and provide essential services. They are not driven by a will to make profit but a will to deliver for residents. If the Government fails to recognise that local authorities are not the same as developers, then councils will face heavy new costs. This in turn, will add pressure to already strained HRAs.
- If the Government fails to recognise that local authorities are not developers, then the money to fund remediation must come from somewhere and it will inevitably be at the expense of another critical service from elsewhere in the council housing departments. We must have reassurances from the Government that councils will not be forced to foot the bill for the failures of the construction, developer, and manufacturing industries.
2. We ask that the Government does not simply remove the Building Safety Manager, as per their amendments of the week commencing 21/03/2022.
- We do not object in principle to a more flexible arrangement than that contained in the Bill for Building Safety Managers (BSM). However, we are concerned that simply removing the BSM undermines a key part of the purpose of the legislation and, even if it does not undermine the purpose of the Bill, it will not reduce costs to leaseholders.
- This change has been introduced purely to save leaseholders the cost of paying for ongoing safety management of their building. Removing the BSM role can only reduce costs if accountable persons do not employ anyone to deliver the function of managing building safety. This would undermine the whole purpose of the Bill.
- The Building Safety Bill was produced following an extensive two stage investigation by Dame Judith Hackitt, in which residents’ groups, regulators landlords and others all participated. Dame Judith’s report recommended that
- “The duty holder must nominate a ‘building safety manager’ with the relevant skills, knowledge, and expertise to assist in discharging their duties and to be available to residents concerned about safety in their building”.
- The LGA therefore opposes these amendments and would support the introduction of a ‘person responsible for building safety’ who could be the point of contact for residents to raise building safety issues with.
3. We ask that the construction industry, as well as developers and manufacturers, is made to pay.
- We agree that no leaseholder should have to pay the costs of making their homes safe and the Secretary of State’s previous (10 January 2022) commitment to explore the use of the legal system to ensure developers meet their responsibilities to leaseholders is a positive step in the right direction.
- However, the construction industry must also be made to fix the fire safety defects it has built into blocks owned by councils and housing associations. At present the Government is pursuing developers and product manufacturers while ignoring the role of the wider construction industry in creating the building safety crisis.
4. It is important to expand the scope of the Bill so that the more stringent building safety framework applies not just to buildings over 18 metres, but also to those under 18 metres where those buildings are multiple occupancy dwellings.
- The LGA has always maintained that height is a poor indicator of risk. We are also concerned that by restricting the scope of the Building Safety Regulator to buildings over 18 metres, the Government risks creating a two-tier system.
- The Government has already accepted that allowing developers to choose their own regulator has undermined the regulation of building safety by disincentivising effective regulation. It has therefore removed that right in relation to buildings over 18 metres. The LGA does not recommend the continuation of this flawed model in relation to buildings under 18 metres. The LGA has worked with Peers on amendments to the Bill which would remedy this failing by removing the right of developers of residential buildings under 18 metres to choose their own regulator. Amendments we support seek to achieve this by making local authorities the building control authority for residential blocks under 18 metres and making developers of these buildings subject to Gateways 2 and 3 (more on these below).
- Given the volume of work involved and the capacity of local authority regulators, this reform would lead to private building control firms (Approved Inspectors) competing for local authority contracts to deliver regulation rather than competing for contracts awarded by developers, as at present, incentivising better regulation where the existing system incentivises lax regulation.
5. It is imperative that councils are funded to deliver the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). The current BSR structure means enforcement and inspection activity will, in practice, be conducted to a large degree by councils and fire and rescue services.
- We are also concerned about the new Building Safety Regulator (BSR) and the implications of this for local authorities. The BSR will be within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The BSR will oversee the safety and performance of all buildings and assist and encourage competence among the built environment industry, and registered building inspectors.
- However, the BSR will rely on councils and fire and rescue services to deliver the regime for higher-risk buildings. Once up and running the system relies on cost recovery; but there is a need for funding in the next few years to increase skilled capacity in local authority building control and in the fire service.
- Without this funding we doubt the ability of the BSR to assess all high-rise buildings safety cases by the end of the decade. Moreover, we are concerned that the fire service could be left with conflicting objectives under the National Framework and the Bill, potentially undermining a risk-based approach to the allocation of Fire and Rescue Service resource.
- A significant proportion of the fire safety failures uncovered in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster are not related to cladding and the Government has, so far, refused to fund these. Funding must be forthcoming to social landlords to addresses non-ACM cladding related risks.
- Through our debate briefings, written and oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, and briefing work at Second Reading, we have continually sought to strengthen the Bill for both local authorities and residents.