Hansard

It is my pleasure to speak on behalf of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee in this stage 1 debate on the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill.

The issue of potentially dangerous cladding has affected the lives of many people across the country since the tragedy at Grenfell tower. On behalf of the committee, I thank all those who have shared with us their personal experiences of the impact of living in or owning a property with cladding.

During our scrutiny of the bill, many people invested their professional time and experience in helping us to understand what can often be very technical issues. We heard from panels of witnesses, including property owners and residents, developers, experts on building standards and fire safety, and representatives from the worlds of finance and insurance. Our call for written evidence received more than 60 responses, and our thanks go to all those who contributed.

The dangers of potentially combustible cladding became terrifyingly clear in 2017. It is now almost seven years since so many people lost their lives at Grenfell. Parliament agreed to an expedited timescale for the bill on the ground that the Scottish Government wants to avoid any further delays in tackling the issue. As a result, our scrutiny was time limited but nonetheless thorough.

The committee heard the personal testimonies of people who own or live in buildings with potentially unsafe cladding. We know from those testimonies how important it is to those people to finally have the issue resolved. It is clear that people in social and private housing still live in fear for their safety. Many have been unable to sell their properties, to secure finance on them or to obtain insurance on them. We have even heard about how some property owners have died in the intervening years.

The key message that we heard time and again from witnesses was their frustration at the length of time that it has taken to begin a cladding remediation programme in Scotland. The reality is that very little progress with remediation has been made in the past seven years. We heard from the Scottish Government that, of the 105 buildings that are part of its cladding remediation programme, only one has had any works carried out on it and only one has had mitigation measures put in place.

That frustration has led to concerns and scepticism about whether the bill will make a difference in reality. The minister assured the committee that the bill’s purpose is to tackle delays that are experienced with remediation, and it is my sincere hope that that is the case. Indeed, the committee supports the general principles of the bill and welcomes it as a step in the right direction.

I understand that the Government intends to ensure that all buildings in the pilot phase of the remediation programme are on an SBA pathway this summer. However, as we highlighted in our report, a number of important issues need to be addressed.

First, we need greater clarity about the purpose of the bill. At the heart of the system that the bill proposes is the single building assessment, or SBA. The SBA is a holistic survey of a building to establish what remediation works are required. It is only once those works are completed that a building can be entered into the cladding assurance register. The intention is that that register will give residents peace of mind about their building’s safety and the reassurance that the banks and the insurers need. It is therefore critical to have clarity about what an SBA involves and what work must be completed for a building to enter the register.

The Minister for Housing told the committee that the bill is about cladding remediation, but numerous experts told us that, at present, the scope of the SBA is not yet clear and, in turn, neither are the requirements for entry into the register. The SBA process currently picks up on many fire safety issues far beyond cladding. The Scottish Government needs to provide clarity on what exactly is assessed in an SBA and must provide consistency and certainty in how SBAs will be undertaken. I understand that a specification for the SBA will be completed by May this year.

Fire safety experts and surveyors whom we heard from recommended, as a means of establishing that clarity, the adoption of a methodology developed by the British Standards Institution to assess the fire risk of external walls and cladding, called PAS 9980, which was developed in response to Grenfell and is now widely used in the UK. Although members of the committee are not experts in the technical detail, our witnesses told us that it would be common sense for that to be adopted into Scotland’s cladding remediation programme. Our report therefore requests that the Scottish Government explore its application in carrying out SBAs. I am pleased that the minister has since confirmed that SBAs will align with the existing methodology in PAS 9980.

As noted earlier, the bill provides that buildings will be entered into the cladding assurance register after remediation works are completed. However, we heard strong arguments for buildings being entered into that register at an earlier point in the remediation process. It was suggested to the committee that, instead of waiting years for works to be completed, buildings could go on to the register after the SBA had identified any works that were required and plans had been developed to undertake those works. There was widespread support for that approach, including from insurers and lenders. The committee would welcome the minister’s reflections on that. It was also suggested that the Government should explore that suggestion with those living in affected buildings.

Delivering the cladding remediation programme is a huge undertaking. The bill puts the onus on developers to pay for and carry out any remediation that is required. It was suggested to us that that responsibility could be extended to the wider supply chain, such as manufacturers or architects. However, the committee is in agreement with the Government that there are practical and legal arguments as to why it should be developers that bear the burden. We are concerned about the potential impact of that burden on smaller building companies that might not be able to bear the cost of remediation. Witnesses told us about the risk of small and medium-sized enterprises becoming insolvent, and the impact that that could have on the industry and on home building. In England, a profitability threshold below which companies will not be held liable for remediation has been introduced. The committee therefore asked the Scottish Government to take that into consideration ahead of stage 2 and to carry out a full assessment of the potential impact on SMEs.

When a building’s developers are no longer in existence, the building is described as being “orphaned.” For such buildings, it will be for the Scottish Government to meet the cost of remediation. That will be a long-term and expensive programme of work, for which thorough financial planning is required. The Government must ensure that such orphaned buildings do not become a lower priority, behind any remediation carried out by private developers. The minister assured the committee that orphaned buildings would not be given lower priority, but the committee would welcome the minister’s reflections on how the Government will ensure that orphaned buildings are remediated.

There will be important practical considerations to delivering remediation, too—chiefly whether there are enough qualified professionals available in Scotland to undertake the work of assessing buildings. The committee noted the confidence that the minister and his officials have expressed in the availability of surveyors and fire engineers to undertake SBAs. However, the committee was consistently presented with a picture of skills shortages in those key sectors, which are essential to delivering the bill’s ambitions. The committee was told that there is no course in Scotland to train fire engineers to fill that void, and it is not immediately clear how that obstacle to the acceleration of the remediation programme will be overcome. The Scottish Government must work with the sector to ensure that it can develop a workforce of sufficient numbers and skills to deliver the remediation programme.

There is one important element of delivering the remediation programme that is much simpler to address. All stakeholder groups told the committee how limited the communication with them has been during the past years. That has left them immensely frustrated. The minister reassured the committee that improvements are being made—which is very welcome—but, in the future, the committee will be keen to hear from residents and owners to understand whether they are seeing a genuine improvement in communication.

I look forward to hearing members’ contributions during the debate, and the committee looks forward to working constructively with the Government throughout the bill process. More generally, we will continue to closely scrutinise the progress that is made, and our hope is that the legislation will dramatically increase the pace of remediation. We must not forget that people’s lives are at the heart of this and that many of them have been battling for years to get a resolution.