Agenda item

The Chair invited Charles Loft to introduce the update.

Charles reported that the pace of remediation of buildings with dangerous cladding remained slow and had not been helped by the Covid situation. The Minister had set a new target to get work started on all buildings with ACM cladding by Christmas. However, data collection on buildings with dangerous non-ACM cladding had stalled.

Charles highlighted other issues of concern including problems with the External Wall Fire Review (EWS1) process preventing people obtaining mortgages, and fire risk assessors being unable to get insurance to carry out assessment of external cladding systems. The latter was contributing to a significant lack of skilled people to carry out this vital work.

Charles said that Lord Porter had given evidence to the HCLG Select Committee which was carrying out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill. In its present form, the Bill doesn’t deal with the issue of costs of work and who should ultimately pay.

Following Charles’ introduction, members raised the following points:

·       Extension of permitted development rights, particularly the conversion of offices to flats was a real concern in terms of fire safety. Charles highlighted the letter at Appendix A to the Minister raising this issue and the earlier item when members expressed their concerns to Jonny Bugg. No response had yet been received to the letter and Charles promised to chase it.

·       Members agreed that the ‘locked in equity’ issue where residents were effectively trapped in flats that were unsaleable, was the key issue that needed to be addressed. It was considered that deregulation of the building safety sector was to blame for a lot of the current problems and there was a lack of professional expertise currently available to address them. Charles said that the Building Safety Bill contained a mechanism that should prevent further tragedies in new build blocks but it didn’t address what to do with the existing stock.

·       HMOs in student areas were considered to be a real risk for fire services.

·       It was suggested that local authorities should be working more closely with fire services and authorities to achieve more effective fire safety in the planning system as it was in everybody’s best interests. Charles said that the LGA was responding to the Government’s planning reform consultations, including outlining the concerns over fire safety. He encouraged individual local authorities to do the same. He said that something would have to give, as the Building Safety Bill and the Planning White Paper were currently incompatible.

Decision

Members of the Fire Commission noted the LGA’s building safety work.