Hansard

As a member of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, I am pleased to contribute to this important debate on the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill. I also place on record my thanks to everyone who gave evidence and to the clerks for all their work.

In 2017, the Grenfell tower fire tragically claimed the lives of 72 people. We can all agree that there is an urgent need to identify and remove highly combustible and dangerous cladding, in order to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in Scotland.

Seven years on from the Grenfell fire, the Scottish Government’s efforts to remediate buildings have been shockingly slow. The UK Government has successfully remediated 797 buildings in England, while only two out of the 105 buildings included in the Scottish Government’s own remediation programme have had work carried out. Only 7 per cent of the £97 million provided so far by the UK Government for cladding remediation has been spent by the Scottish Government. I am not going to delay progress further by voting against the bill at stage 1 but, make no mistake, the bill in its current form will not bring about a meaningful improvement in the pace of the remediation programme.

Although the single building assessment is central to the bill, the committee, stakeholders and the minister are not clear about the specification for that, what it will look like or the standards that it will assess against. The single building assessment specification is in development and is due to be published by the end of May this year. That is simply not good enough. It raises questions about a key stage of the entire remediation plan and is something that is far too significant to remain unclear at this point.

The binary nature of the single building assessment was also of major concern throughout the evidence sessions, so I am pleased to note that consideration is being given to basing the fire risk assessment of external walls survey on the PAS 9980 model, tailoring that to the Scottish context. That model is popular with professionals, offers flexibility and is widely used across the United Kingdom.

In his response to the committee, the minister insisted that this is not a wider bill about fire safety. However, the single building assessment might well identify issues that are the responsibility of home owners or factors to remediate. If the building requires completion of all identified remedial works before it can be listed on the cladding assurance register, that might cause further problems down the line for mortgage lending and home insurance.

Furthermore, Homes for Scotland observed a distinct absence of detail on what information is to be provided in the register; which parties are obliged to fulfil an entry to the register; who is in charge of the oversight and accuracy of the register; and the deadlines and parameters for adding properties to the register.

Again, the minister’s response leaves far too many of the important details of the cladding assurance register to be ironed out at a later stage. I hope that, today, the minister will shed some more light on those questions.

From our committee evidence sessions, it is clear that Scotland does not have a framework or mechanisms in place to assess and address the safety of Scotland’s homes. We should look seriously at the creation of a register that assesses fire safety over time, because we cannot have a repeat of what happened. Developers were building to the correct standards at the time and now they will be forced to pay the price for doing so. That is a dangerous precedent to set, which is why we must look at ways—even if they are separate from this legislation—to monitor buildings over time.

Many SME developers, if they are unable to make the financial commitment to remediate, would, under the bill, cease to operate. Homes for Scotland told the committee that the absence of a threshold in the bill will put

“Scottish SMEs at a much higher risk of failure than their equivalents in England.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 23 January 2024; c 41.]

I remain deeply concerned about the lack of detail on that issue in the bill.

The Scottish Government’s effort to remediate buildings has been astonishingly slow. All that we have before us today is a draft bill, which leaves us with more questions than answers. It is unclear what the scope of the bill is, who it will affect and the timescales for completing remediation. As far as the industry is concerned, the lack of detail is incredibly disappointing.

Although the bill is disappointing, it is at least a small step in the right direction and I will, therefore, support it at stage 1 today. As my colleague Miles Briggs said, more needs to be done to get the bill right. It is too important for it to become law when it is only half completed. In the coming weeks, the Scottish Conservatives will work constructively to ensure that we achieve the bill that Parliament and Scotland deserve.