Feryal Clark MP calls for improvements to the Building Safety Bill

Since the tragedy of Grenfell over four years ago, the Government’s approach to the building safety crisis has been ineffective, blighted by in-action, and faltered by increasing costs which have far too often been shamefully passed on to leaseholders.

Despite repeated promises by the Government to make buildings safe and protect leaseholders following Grenfell, hundreds of thousands of people still live in unsafe homes, and millions are caught up in the wider building safety crisis.

Whilst I support the important changes the bill makes to regulation into the future, we needed urgent action and leadership to protect the hundreds of thousands of people already trapped in unsafe homes, facing huge bills to fix historic failures.

Labour colleagues and I support the majority of what is in this bill, so did not oppose tonight’s vote. However, we have serious concerns about what is not included. Labour has called for the Government to legislate to ensure leaseholders cannot be billed for fire and building safety remediation works. Should we not see these changes made, then I shall be joining colleagues in opposing the bill as it progresses.

Rather than yet another betrayal of their promises to leaseholders, we need legal protections to ensure that millions of pounds of building safety remediation costs are not passed on to innocent homeowners and tenants.

Whilst the Government have set £5bn aside to fix dangerous cladding, there are serious issues with the scope of the funding, and the Government has their heads in the sand about the crisis of confidence in tall buildings. Everybody from insurers, to mortgage lenders, risk assessors and others, is concerned about their liability, leaving thousands of buildings with an ever-growing list of remediation works, some of which are potentially life threatening.

Labour is calling on the government to establish a new Building Works Agency, to get a grip of the extent of this crisis and bring down spiralling costs. This crack-team of building safety experts should go block by block, identifying which works need doing, fix, fund and crucially certify them as safe and sellable at the end, to allow leaseholders to finally move on with their lives.

My priority is and always will be protecting leaseholders in Enfield North, and I will continue to do everything I can alongside colleagues in Parliament to end this scandal.

If any constituents are facing issues with cladding, please get in touch with my team on feryal.clark.mp@parliament.uk.