The government’s Building Safety Bill has been a long time coming, but its publication today offers little certainty for residents caught up in Britain’s cladding scandal.
For leaseholders, the bad news is this: many will remain trapped in buildings cloaked in combustible external wall systems. Despite the housing secretary Robert Jenrick’s insistence that the new system would ‘reassure the vast majority of residents’, there is little in the bill to alleviate their worries.
To throw more money at it will inevitably lead to more corners being cut and workers without the proper competence being drafted in
The bill proposes the creation of a new Building Safety Regulator (BSR), although an interim regulator has already been appointed through a change of desk for Peter Baker, the Health and Safety Executive’s former chief inspector of construction, who is already assembling his interim regulatory team. Draft secondary legislation addresses the competence of people working on high rise buildings in relation to life safety issues, a key concern of Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review of building regulations and fire safety in May 2018; and the bill makes provision for an industry competence committee as one of three advisory committees to be hosted by the BSR; but the Interim ICC has already met.
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