Agenda item

The Chairman invited Mark Norris, Principal Adviser to give an update on LGA’s building safety work including remediation, the Building Safety Act and improvement work with councils.

The following was highlighted to Members:

·        Councils with building stock would be expected to start registering their buildings from April. Once the regime would be in place, the LGA would seek to engage with stock owning authorities to hear if there are any issues they were experiencing or anticipating for October.

·        There had been discussions on the definition of a building, the definition introduced could make it more difficult for the regulator to treat certain buildings as a whole

·        Members were encouraged to sign up for the LGA’s building safety e-learning module and encouraged to give feedback.

Members made the following comments:

·        It was important that government is lobbied to ensure buildings are not excluded from the regime

·        Joint inspections from both councils and the fire brigade had caused some confusion

Regarding inspection, it had been raised that an implication for the definition of a building is that for some buildings, some parts of the building would need to be checked by the fire brigade and another part would need to be checked by the council with then the building safety regulator doing further inspections.

Decision:

Members noted the report.