Government told to confirm funding for building safety repairs before publishing bill

Housing committee key recommendations

• We urge the government to include as much detail in the bill itself or to publish the secondary legislation alongside it. It is especially important that this be done for core provisions such as the gateways process and the regulation of construction products.
  
  
• We recommend that the government publish with the bill a clear timetable for commencement so it is clear by when the industry has to demonstrate compliance and the building safety regulator establish the regime.
• The government must recommit to the principle that leaseholders should not pay anything towards the cost of remediating historical building safety defects, and, in order to provide leaseholders with the peace of mind they deserve, amend the bill to explicitly exclude historical costs from the building safety charge.
• The government must announce, before it publishes the bill, its proposals for funding all historical building safety remediation works. These proposals should impose no costs on leaseholders and explicitly acknowledge that in the short term the government must foot the bill, until such time as mechanisms for cost recovery have been developed.
• We strongly recommend that the initial scope of the regime be enshrined in the bill itself, and not be left to delegated legislation, in order to give stakeholders the certainty they need to prepare for the new regime.
• We recommend that the government specify in the bill itself by way of a requirement to “have regard” the factors that must be considered in the future when the scope of the regime is expanded and that the ability of residents to evacuate the building be the principal factor. We also recommend that any requirement to have regard to the ability of residents to evacuate a building explicitly include both the vulnerability of residents and the number of means of egress. Finally, we recommend that the government indicate its intention to review the scope and set a timetable for doing so.
• We strongly recommend that the government include provisions in the bill itself for establishing a national system of third-party accreditation and registration for all professionals working on the design and construction of higher-risk buildings.
• We recommend that dutyholder choice be removed entirely from the building control system and replaced by a system of independent appointment, and that this be made explicit either in the bill or in secondary legislation to be published alongside it.
• We recommend that the bill provide for a general duty to co-operate on accountable persons in respect of buildings for which there are multiple accountable persons and that the government publish statutory guidance alongside the bill setting out the sorts of behaviours that would be expected under such a duty.
• We recommend that the government publish statutory guidance alongside the bill outlining how it expects accountable persons and responsible persons to co-operate in practice. In the longer term, we recommend that the government review the operation of the two regimes with a view to rationalising and simplifying the legislation.
• The government must announce before the bill is published whether it intends to adopt the competency framework for the role of building safety manager proposed in the report from working group 8. If it does not, it must publish with the bill the full details of the framework it does intend to adopt.
• We recommend that the government provide, either in legislation or in statutory guidance, for a national system of accreditation to agreed common standards and for a central register of building safety managers.
• We recommend that the government provide for the publication of test failures and re-run tests and for the establishment of an independent and unified system of third-party certification in order to introduce greater transparency and rigour into the regulation of construction products.