Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
Oral evidence: Fire Safety, HC 62
Wednesday 17 January 2024
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 January 2024.
Members present: Mr Clive Betts (Chair); Bob Blackman; Ian Byrne; Mrs Natalie Elphicke; Kate Hollern; Tom Hunt; Mary Robinson; Nadia Whittome; Mohammad Yasin.
Questions 45 - 115
Witnesses
I: Lee Rowley MP, Minister of State for Housing, Planning and Building Safety, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Chandru Dissanayeke, Director of Regulatory Reform, Safer and Greener Buildings, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Witnesses: Lee Rowley and Chandru Dissanayeke.
Chair: Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s session of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee. This morning, we have an evidence session about fire safety. We welcome the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety. We will come over to you, Minister, in a minute, with your official. This is an important issue because of the tragedy of Grenfell and what is now being done to try to make buildings safer for people to live in. That is what we will be looking at this morning.
I just want to ask members of the Committee to declare any particular interest they have with regard to this inquiry. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Mohammad Yasin: I am a member of Bedford town deal board and employ a councillor in my office.
Ian Byrne: I having nothing to declare.
Kate Hollern: I employ a councillor in my office.
Bob Blackman: I am a vice-president of the LGA and I employ councillors in my office.
Mrs Elphicke: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I employ a councillor in my office, and I have Envirograf, the leading fire safety factory and experts, in my constituency, in Barfreston.
Bob Blackman: I want to add that I am also chairman of the all-party group on fire safety.
Tom Hunt: I employ two councillors in my office.
Q45 Chair: Thank you all for that. Minister, welcome. Would you like to introduce your official who is with you today to provide expert advice?
Lee Rowley: Chandru is a director in the building safety team.
Chandru Dissanayeke: I am Chandru Dissanayeke. I am director for regulatory reform in the safer and greener buildings division in the Department, with specific responsibility for construction products.
Lee Rowley: He has been on this for a significant amount of time in the Department, and so hopefully there is continuity.
Chair: So he should know what he is talking about.
Lee Rowley: Absolutely, even if the Minister does not.
Q46 Chair: Welcome. I think that you have been to the Committee several times before to advise us, which has been appreciated. Minister, the Government established a review, conducted by Paul Morrell, to look at issues particularly of product safety and to make sure that materials and products that we use in buildings do not have a great fire risk attached to them. A report was produced some time ago. When can we expect you to publish a response to it?
Lee Rowley: The answer to that, Chair, is “soon”. I know that that is not a helpful answer and I know that, if I was sat in your place, you would immediately, rightly, take me up on it. I have done that before when I have been sat on Select Committees, but it is genuinely soon. If you would indulge me for a minute or so, I will try to explain it better than that.
I really welcome what Anneliese Day and Paul Morrell did. It is a very substantive document in terms of its sheer length and detail. I know that they have been in front of you and talked about it in detail. It is a huge endeavour and I am very grateful for that. That, necessarily, because of the detail, as I have said to you in correspondence before, takes time to work through. I recognise the interest and the importance of moving as quickly as possible on this.
I am sure that you are going to test me on that in the minutes ahead, but I want to give you my and the Secretary of State’s commitment to reforming this area. We recognise that you and others are keen to see what is coming out of Government as soon as possible. I cannot give you a date today. There are going to be some frustrating elements to my answers, because we are literally in the middle of working through exactly what we are going to say, how we are going to say it when passing back documents, and exactly how to do it. We are literally working through how to make this public statement, but I am not in a position to talk about what that public statement is just yet.
Q47 Chair: We might just have a little word, then, about what has been going on in that consideration. Have you or your colleagues in the Department met with Paul Morrell since the review to talk with him about his recommendations?
Lee Rowley: I met with him at some point last year. I believe that I have met with him twice, to my recollection, and also with Anneliese in one of those meetings. I have had conversations with Paul on that. Internally, we have been meeting extremely regularly. If it is helpful, Chandru can go through the other interactions that he has had from a departmental perspective.
Chandru Dissanayeke: The Minister is absolutely right. Soon after the report, he met with Paul and Anneliese. We met with them as well. They kindly offered to meet with us as we needed. We met with them again, unbeknown to us, just prior to them coming here, but that was not deliberate. That was purely by chance. As we start to develop the content of the announcement, as the Minister has described, our intention is to test that with them more and to engage them more as that develops.
Q48 Chair: That is a helpful assurance and commitment. When you eventually come to your final conclusion about what to do with the recommendations, are you going to publish a response to the review indicating what recommendations you are accepting or why you are not accepting some, if you decide not to accept some?
Lee Rowley: That is the detail that we are working through at the moment. Of course, we will respond, as in we will move it on to the next level. Whether that is a formal response to the document is a question that we are working through internally—not because it is not very important that we go through all of the detail. Making sure that we deal with it in depth is very important, given the time that they have taken to do that. Equally, we recognise that, because people have been waiting and it has taken time to get here, because of the complexity of the detail, we also want to move it on as quickly as possible.
There is necessarily, as I know you will appreciate, Chair, an element of this that needs to go for further discussion, because we are going to come out with a set of ideas and next steps, which will need to be talked about. There is going to be a whole heap of consultation and discussion, and I very much welcome the Committee’s involvement in that as well, when we do that. We are working through exactly what that looks like, but you have my assurance that that is all starting from the Morrell-Day report. Therefore, it will have a significant element of a response to the information within that to try to take it forward.
Q49 Chair: Minister, if you do not say why you have not accepted some recommendations or have changed them significantly, if that is what you choose to do, all that is going to happen is that people are going to ask questions about why.
Lee Rowley: The reason why I am hedging is that there are probably going to be elements of this report that we want to understand in more detail. In the initial documentation that we put out, depending on whether there is a consultative element immediately to it, where we want to understand this more and get more information from the sector, etc, we may choose to reserve our position on some elements.
I am trying to avoid saying that there will be a single document with a full response, accept or reject, etc. I am saying that that will be part of a process whereby, for all the things that have been talked about in here, there will be a conclusion drawn by the Government in time. Is that fair?
Chandru Dissanayeke: Yes, absolutely. The report identifies several weaknesses within the current regime and the intention is to address those wholly, and so, in that sense, the Minister is absolutely right.
Lee Rowley: It might be multi-stage rather than a single document that can be pointed to.
Chair: Indeed, we might come back as a Committee and explore further, if that is the situation.
Q50 Mrs Elphicke: Welcome, Minister, and welcome, Chandru. Thank you for coming today. I want to just explore this general safety requirement and safety critical products issue. We know that one of the key lessons from the Grenfell tragedy was that it was a combination of products and installation that resulted in additional fire safety issues and risks. In what way is a regime that is centred around identification of a manufactured safety-critical product in itself going to answer the concerns that have been raised?
Lee Rowley: The point that you made in your question is the important one, because this area is so complex that there is not going to be a single answer. I will let Chandru come in in a moment. He has been much more involved in this, even in the last year or so, with me trying to get under the skin of it.
The question that I always ask of Chandru and his team is, if you take a simple unit within this process—a nail, a piece of plywood or whatever—there are many scenarios where that product is, in itself, not unsafe, unless what it does has been misrepresented, but there are some where it may be.
Understanding how that all interacts is complex, so there is a good and fair argument, which is why we took powers in the 2022 Act to say that there is a list of things that are just critical and will always need an additional level of focus, whatever that is, but then there is a series of things that you put in a system. A nail in itself is not necessarily going to be a problem. A nail in a very high-rise building, with a lot of things around it that are challenging and need to be managed carefully, could be a problem. It is about getting a regulatory regime that responds to both of those and is not disproportionate.
Chandru Dissanayeke: That is absolutely right. In his evidence to the Committee, Paul Morrell made the point at the time that you cannot argue against the general safety duty, in and of itself, but you must make sure that it is proportionate in the way that it is applied, and that the sector understands what is happening.
He goes on in his and Anneliese’s next recommendation—recommendation 7, the systems recommendation—to say that the use of the safety critical definition may allow thinking around how we test for systems. Exactly to your point, how do products come together on site and get used? The challenge to us that he put in his report is whether you could use the safety-critical definition of products to enable us to look at that. That is certainly something that we are considering as part of our reforms.
Q51 Mrs Elphicke: We are several years on from the Grenfell tragedy and eight months on, if my maths is right, from the report that you are concerned with. It is getting on for two years in relation to the Government legislating in this place. I mentioned the fire safety factory Envirograf, which is in my constituency. They are world-leading experts. They do this stuff all over the world every single day. In what way is the new regime going to be different from the current one? When are you going to tell business what the new regime looks like and when are you going to come to a decision about this and bring this in?
Lee Rowley: There are a significant number of things that have changed. The Office for Product Safety and Standards, for example, has had powers for several years now. It has taken action on a number of occasions and, last year, examined more than 100 reports where there were problems with safety. It is absolutely the case that action is being taken, progress has been made, legislative changes have been brought forward, and a huge amount of enforcement is going on. There is also some action that the recovery strategy unit is taking.
I would not want the Committee, following this meeting today, to go away and say, “The Government have done nothing for x number of years and are now asking for a bit more time”, because that would not be an accurate reflection of what has happened. The Government have done a lot. You are absolutely right that there is a need for the Government to be clear about the overall strategy on construction products. I absolutely agree with you. It has been one of the big areas of focus since I became building sector Minister in November of the year before last, hence why we published Morrell-Day in April last year. It is extremely complicated, and that is not an excuse; it is a reality.
Q52 Mrs Elphicke: Minister, I am going to just interrupt you there, only to say that the job of Government is to grasp complicated things as well as simple ones.
Lee Rowley: Absolutely.
Mrs Elphicke: This is a complicated issue, but also a straightforward one, in the sense that this new programme is going to put the obligations in relation to the general safety requirements firmly in the hands of those who are constructing and those who are making and providing products. When are they going to have the information that they need to do their job? How are you, as the Minister, going to make sure that we have an answer to what has now been going on for a very long time? As you have said, this is not a new brief to you.
Lee Rowley: As I said to you, I am extremely sorry and I apologise for an answer to a question that is challenging and that I also would wish you to test more, but I cannot give you a date today. You are right that the job of Government is to deal with complexities. The job of Government is also to be clear, honest and open about the realities of dealing with complexities, which is what I am also trying to do today.
If you take the example, which I promise I will not labour too much, of the screw or the nail, we have to make sure that, where its use in a particular scenario is problematic or requires a lot of thinking around safety or propriety and all the rest of it, the system responds to that. We also have to make sure that, when my dad buys a pile of nails to knock into a fence, we are not creating a disproportionate requirement upon the product manufacturers to give a whole heap of information or do a whole heap of things for something that is not safety critical and will not, at the end of the day, have a bearing on the important objectives that we both share.
That is a very challenging balance to strike. We have spent much of the last eight or nine months working internally to try to do that. I am hoping that we will be able to come out with further information very soon on that for everybody to talk about, including you. It is a challenging balance to strike and I just have to be honest with you about that challenge.
Q53 Nadia Whittome: Paul Morrell, the chair of the independent review of the construction product testing regime, told us that, in the UK, “there is a standard for the regulation of a bidet, but none for the regulation of a fire door, or at least there was not at the time of our review”. Does this surprise you? Why was this situation allowed to continue even after Grenfell, where the fire doors failed?
Lee Rowley: It is a matter of fact that there is not a comprehensive coverage of standards, and the Morrell-Day report goes into really helpful detail with regards to that. In terms of how we have gotten here, that is a challenging question to answer. Chandru will probably want to give some thoughts, but, as I understand it, the whole system here is based on a set of things that the European Union and its predecessors brought forward, based primarily on internal market consistency. We recognise that we need to go much further than that, hence why we have committed to a programme of reform to do that.
There are standards in many areas, but, as Morrell-Day have indicated, there are not sufficient standards in more than half of areas and we need to close those gaps. That is part of the objective of what we will bring out in the coming months.
Q54 Nadia Whittome: So you are saying, essentially, that this is the EU’s fault, but the EU is not the Government. You are.
Lee Rowley: No. We are not playing that game, Nadia. I have not said anything around it being the EU’s fault. I am just reflecting the reality and the history of how we have got here. I am not blaming anybody. This is about trying to move this forward, in an immensely complicated area, as quickly as possible.
Chandru Dissanayeke: On the specific fire door and bidet, what Paul was referring to are the regulations, as in construction products regulation enforcement. He was very clear that there was a harmonised standard for bidets but not for fire doors. It is wrong to say that there is not a standard in the UK. There is. There has been for several years. It is referenced in the approved documents for 30 minutes, 60 minutes and thereafter. It is just that that is not a regulatory standard set out in construction products regulation, because it had not, at that point, been harmonised with the EU. Since then, there is a harmonised standard available for fire doors.
Q55 Nadia Whittome: In 2020, your Department commissioned research that considered over 3,000 construction product standards associated with testing. What were the overall findings of that? Will you be publishing the research report, and will you provide us with a copy?
Lee Rowley: Yes. We are going to release that. There is no reason not to. I am not really sure why it has not gone out already. We will release it within the coming weeks.
Q56 Nadia Whittome: What were the findings overall?
Lee Rowley: I will let you read it when it is released.
Q57 Nadia Whittome: Are there one or two findings that you can share?
Lee Rowley: I will release it in the coming weeks. I am keen for transparency. There is no reason why it is not out there, so we will get it out there as soon as we can.
Chandru Dissanayeke: It is important to recognise that that piece of work was done for a specific reason. There was an acknowledgement in that research that the data and the information out there was not sufficient. Paul and Anneliese make that point in their report and, in fact, asked UKAS to step into that breach. The headline here is that there are several standards that need to be reviewed on a regular basis and there is work to be done in that space.
Lee Rowley: It is a number of years old. It is from 2020. The Department received it in 2021. I was not there. That is not an excuse, and I am representing the Department. It does need to go out. Research comes in varying sizes, quantities and qualities, but transparency is best. We should just get it out there, but it is a number of years old.
Q58 Nadia Whittome: Why has it taken so long for the Construction Products Standards Committee to begin its work, bearing in mind that, six years ago, back in 2018, the Government said that they would establish such a committee within 12 months? Can you tell us how much work the committee has done now?
Lee Rowley: As I understand it, we still need to move forward with that. Having asked questions about this, I understand that the original purpose of that committee was something that has largely been superseded.
Q59 Nadia Whittome: What has it been superseded by?
Chandru Dissanayeke: The original purpose of the committee was to advise Government Ministers, when a product was being harmonised by the EU, on whether that should be adopted into UK law as well. We were thinking about giving it additional responsibilities to look at the wider testing regime.
Since then, the Office for Product Safety and Standards has taken on the national construction products regulation. In discussions with them, they were very keen to undertake much of that work themselves and determine how to move forward with the committee. The idea of an independent committee is not something that we have necessarily parked. It is part of our ongoing thinking and our reform, but we want to do that in conjunction with the national construction products regulator and to make sure that that sits well within an overall system and oversight.
Lee Rowley: It probably still has value but with a different scope and terms of reference. The way that we are approaching it now is that, when we come out with the next steps post Morrell-Day, more will be said about that and whether we think that there is a value in retaining that, or something along those lines, to try to pull it all together.
Q60 Bob Blackman: One of the concerns that we have as a Committee, and that Paul Morrell expressed, is that buildings are still being built to the current standards. There has been a delay from both the Morrell report and what has been said here, so developers will just carry on building to the same standards until you change them. Are you going to make those standards retrospective, which will then require building owners or developers to go back and correct things that they may have done inadvertently, because they were built to the previous standards, or is it just going to be from the date of publication or a law coming in that buildings that are developed will require the new standards?
Lee Rowley: Forgive me if I am misunderstanding, and please stop me if I am. We have a housing and building stock. I go and visit a number of the properties that are those more likely to be exposed to these kinds of issues or to have consequences as a result. I went to see one in Westminster just a few months ago, and they said, “We have all these records that tell us that this stuff was inside our walls. When we went and opened them up, there was something completely different inside them”. They have records of the construction products that should be in there. They have records of delivery to site, in this instance. Somewhere between the day that it was delivered to site and two days later, when it was put on the property, it disappeared, and something else of a different or lower standard came on.
In that sense, the reality is that we have the stock that we have. We have to make sure that that stock is safe and conforms to all of the standards and regulations that it needs to. I see that as a somewhat separate approach to here, which is why we have all of the fire and risk assessments going on, as well as a massive remediation programme where we need it, and why we have opened up the additional things. This is about where we go in the future to make sure that there are, at an earlier stage in the process, a series of additional thresholds and safeguards that make sure that these products are in the various systems and that there is greater clarity about how they are used and what they are doing there.
Q61 Bob Blackman: You have misunderstood my question. The example that you have quoted is one where a developer or the people involved in the construction used materials that were substandard and did not accord to the standards. What I am looking at is the fact that you are going to reinforce the standards and make them more stringent. Is that going to apply retrospectively to buildings that are already in place, or just from that day forward on the new buildings that are built? The reason why this is important is that, if you are going to make it retrospective, the fire safety inspections are going to have to be far more rigorous and accord to the new standards rather than the old ones against which those buildings were built. I know that it is technical, but this is quite a big construction issue.
Lee Rowley: As I understand it—Chandru, please correct me if I am wrong—the requirement is that we need to make sure that buildings out there are safe now, irrespective of what happens here. Within that, there is going to be a set of safety issues that were not known about or a set of changes. PAS 9980 has come in, etc. Those are the things that we need to do, and we need to do those now, irrespective of what happens here. In terms of what we do here, that will be in the documentation that comes forward in the months ahead.
Q62 Bob Blackman: Is it going to be retrospective or not?
Lee Rowley: I am sorry to take on the question. I do not want to get into a retrospectivity discussion, because I want the buildings to be safe and the actions to be undertaken now where buildings need to be safe. Buildings need to get to the relevant standards now, so that there is not a safety issue.
Q63 Bob Blackman: If you are changing the standards from what the industry has understood to new ones, that means that, in order to accord with those standards, it has to be retrospective to bring them up to scratch.
Lee Rowley: It depends on what the detail is and on how we approach it, which is part of the discussion that will come in the months ahead. In a moment, Tom is probably going to talk to me about The Mill, because he rightly talks to me about that and other important buildings in Ipswich. Those need to be safe right now, irrespective of what we do here. We or a future Government will have to take a decision about how we want to approach this.
Q64 Tom Hunt: When do you expect the new National Regulator of Construction Products to be operational, and what will its main role be?
Lee Rowley: The OPSS is already in place and I meet with them very regularly. I last met with them last week. They are already doing market surveillance. They are already taking feedback from interested parties where there are concerns about specific products, and have already taken action against a number. They are in the public domain. They have already taken action against a product from Kingspan, which was withdrawn from the market. They took action against two products from Unilin about eight or nine months ago, where they have also made adjustments where necessary.
In terms of the processes, they are already in place. There is the best part of £20 million of funding on an annual basis for that work. It reports directly to the Secretary of State, and I act on behalf of the Secretary of State to talk to the OPSS about it. They have a big and expanding programme of work to make sure that they are covering what they can.
Q65 Tom Hunt: What is your assessment with regard to local authorities and other enforcement bodies being adequately resourced to carry out their enforcement duties effectively?
Lee Rowley: On construction products or generally?
Tom Hunt: Generally.
Lee Rowley: Paul Morrell has also talked about this. There is a question about how we make sure that the system works in the long term through the interaction with trading standards and the OPSS. The OPSS has just had a lot of money. They are scaling up. That is clear evidence that the Department is moving on this, but there is further work to do with regard to individual trading standards.
We will all know, as constituency MPs, that trading standards departments work extremely hard, but there is variability in their focus and resources, what they look at and what comes into their inboxes, so there is further work to do on that. It is important that we have a central body that leads on that, and we now have that and they are moving, but there is further work to do on that.
In terms of enforcement generally, particularly around remediation, we have put quite a lot of funds into the process to make that work. We are funding individual authorities, particularly where there are large numbers of properties that have problems with remediation. We are looping back to those authorities to make sure that they are using both their own resources and those that we have given them, to make sure that it works. That is happening on a very regular basis. There is another loop going on right now. There are some authorities that are further ahead than others. Some have good reasons for that, and we need to gently encourage others to do more, but there is a lot of work going on to make sure that the enforcement works.
Q66 Tom Hunt: I do not think that there have been many constituencies that have been as badly affected by the building safety crisis as Ipswich. The Mill, as you have already mentioned, is an incredibly complex case, where over 200 of my constituents have been in limbo for years and years. We know that there are issues with cladding. We also know that there are deep structural problems with the building as well. An FRAEW is currently being carried out on the external walls.
Frankly, at the moment, my leaseholders are in the dark when it comes to knowing what the problems are. They are not living in the tower but living in the blocks. There are issues with fire doors and sometimes with material in the walls, etc. It is right that they have full transparency. It is right that they know as much as possible. At the moment, they are not getting any assurances from the administrator that, when this report is completed, it is going to be shared with leaseholders. What would your view on that be?
Lee Rowley: Transparency is best. It should be shared. You are absolutely right that The Mill is very complicated, and I am grateful for all the work that you are doing on it, but transparency is important. Leaseholders need to know what building they are living in.
Q67 Tom Hunt: It is pleasing that you are going to be bringing in new and more stringent regulations, but, certainly in Ipswich, there have been multiple cases where the existing regulations have not been followed, and flagrantly not followed. Laing O’Rourke, which was the developer for The Mill and paints itself as a much respected company, did a shocking job when it came to The Mill, as far as I can see, and seems to have got away with it. I know that there was an out-of-court settlement, but I wonder what your view is on enforcement action on those sorts of big players that seem to have got away with poor work, which has put my constituents in the cruellest form of limbo for a number of years.
In terms of some of the council offices, there are a whole load of buildings in Ipswich that, frankly, should never have been signed off—not just The Mill, but Cardinal Lofts is another example, which you visited. The issues there were not minor. They were extensive. Yes, it is all about moving forward, but a lot of my constituents think that there is a great sense of unfairness that so many people who have been behind this seem to have got away with it, whereas the people paying the price are those who were innocent, who did everything in good faith, who wanted to buy their first property and saved up for it, and who are now trapped and cannot move on with their lives. I just wanted to know the extent to which that is a focus for you.
Lee Rowley: It is a huge focus. The question is always how to structure it. Ideally, you would do everything at the same time, but we are not in an ideal world. The first thing that we have to do is to make sure that the remediation programme gets going. We have done that now. We have revised the statistics, per some of your requests from this Committee. Since October, I hope that people can see nearly 800 buildings now having completed, and 1,500 in the process, with significant movement on the cladding support scheme. The first thing to do is to get the remediation going. Let us just get these buildings fixed, where they were not being fixed before.
The second thing to do is to separate the ability for people to make life choices from the remediation of the building, which is why I have done a lot of work with the lending industry, and that is moving in a really positive direction as well. We just signed up a number of banks and building societies to do that.
The third thing—you are absolutely right—is not to forget that certain organisations were behind this. We need, where we can, to make sure that they step up to the plate and resolve that.
You can see the progress that has been made in terms of the responsible actors scheme and the commitment in the developer contract for 50-odd developers to take ownership of the 1,000-plus buildings that they created, with more than £2 billion going into that.
I hope that you are seeing progress on that as well, but there are still a residual number of organisations and actors that we need to continue to pursue. We will be able to say some stuff on that and to say more in the coming years.
Q68 Tom Hunt: It just seems that the problem has been that a number of actors have felt that they have impunity and can get away scot-free. I understand that Laing O’Rourke, for example, still has not signed the developers’ pledge, which I find slightly baffling. That is the end for me. I have, of course, invited you to Ipswich, and I hope that you will accept that invitation.
Lee Rowley: You are right. There is a group of actors out there that acted badly. They should not have acted badly in the first place. The second-best thing that you can do when you act badly is to sort out the stuff that you have done. There is still a group of actors within this process—some freeholders, builders and developers—who are really acting egregiously, and there is work underway.
Q69 Tom Hunt: You will know about St Francis Tower, the third example I raise, where I have had a large number of constituents living for multiple years in darkness, with a shrink wrap completely blocking natural light. I appreciate the code of practice being published, but you have an extraordinary situation where we asked the freeholder to meet with us, and they felt that they could ignore a Minister of the Crown and not meet with the Minister. How is that allowed to happen? How do these actors get away with that?
Lee Rowley: The next step is to see what we can do to make that code of practice more rigorous and enforceable. It is a voluntary code of practice. We are separating the people who are playing ball from those who are not. Every time we do that, we get a residual group of people who are acting egregiously. We will take the action that is necessary where we are able to do it.
Q70 Chair: Paul Morrell said that, under the current regime, there has not been a single prosecution since the regulations on product safety were changed.
Lee Rowley: When the OPSS has intervened, changes have been made. Following a logical extension of that, the OPSS has powers to pursue. There is a broader conversation about wanting to make sure that those involved in the construction products sector make contributions and recognise the issues.
Q71 Chair: Does trading standards have the skills to do this?
Lee Rowley: Yes. There is nothing conceptually problematic in the law. If you think that there is, please let me know. I welcome any recommendations on that in your report. One of the reasons why we brought the OPSS in is to assist in that process. But you are right, Chair, that it is important to recognise that, in this part of the sector, there is poor behaviour. I know that we have said this before. There is work going on in the Department through the recovery strategy unit in this regard. If it is helpful, I can get the recovery strategy unit to brief you in camera or give you an update on the work that it is doing.
Chair: That might be helpful and we may take that up.
Q72 Ian Byrne: Just listening to Tom’s evidence, we have all had experiences of that, Minister. Do you not think that there are parallels with what we are seeing with the Post Office scandal? It just strikes you all the time, does it not, that it seems that unfairness is totally hardwired into policy? It is always the person on the receiving end, and these big corporations just get away with it all the time.
I will make a plea to you that, when we come back with the recommendations and the report from the Government, this can be addressed so that people can see that this place is on the side of the people who are being affected, and that the people who are doing so much wrong—bad construction or whatever—pay the penalty for it. At the moment, what we are seeing in society is that they are just all getting away with it scot-free.
Lee Rowley: The developers do not think that they are getting away with it.
Ian Byrne: The ones in my constituency certainly do.
Lee Rowley: When I go and talk to the developers, they are not happy with the Government, because we have spent an enormous amount of time making sure that those who caused the problem are paying for it. That is why the best part of £2 billion has been committed from the developers. You can see the down-payment, you can see the progress, and you can see that the pressure that the Secretary of State has put on them is yielding results. That is a significant change. It is a significant improvement.
Q73 Ian Byrne: No one has been prosecuted, as the Chair just said.
Lee Rowley: We have the developers paying. There is more to do in this space.
Q74 Mohammad Yasin: Paul Morrell had no evidence because he had no powers to investigate. However, he told us that there is a general belief in the industry that some manufacturers submit their products to several testing houses until they find one that will approve them. Is this bad practice widespread?
Lee Rowley: It is definitely bad practice. Let me be more nuanced than that. It is legitimate for organisations to seek to get their products tested for safety, then to make adjustments and to come back. I do not think that anybody around this table would disagree with that. What are not legitimate are the kinds of things that we read about in Peter Apps’ book, whereby there was shopping around and a repetition of the same tests until a different outcome was provided, so that it could be marketed on that basis and only that basis.
Q75 Mohammad Yasin: My question was, “Is this bad practice widespread?”
Chandru Dissanayeke: We have no evidence to say that it is widespread, which is, essentially, what Paul Morrell and Anneliese Day also said. In his testimony to you, Paul said very clearly that he had heard this, but he had found no evidence of it in his discussions with testing houses. I should say that we do see a conflict of interest, which Paul and Anneliese highlight, where test houses were unwilling to share information where they knew products were bad, because they were subject to commercial confidentiality agreements. That is something that he recommended we looked at, and we are looking at that as well.
Q76 Mohammad Yasin: Should failed tests be published for public transparency to ensure that informed decisions can be made by the public?
Lee Rowley: That is something that we need to pick up when we publish further information. It is a legitimate position to have, but let me make it absolutely clear that what happened in all of these processes, from what I can see, was outrageous in many instances. There is absolutely no defence from me of that. There is clear misuse of the testing process, as far as I can see, with people shopping around and choosing to represent things only in a particular way, which is not really reflective of what happened.
By the same token, we have to make sure that this process works. In the same way that that is outrageous, it is legitimate that organisations can test. We want them to test. We want to make sure that these products are safe and that they can engage in the process in good faith, which makes sure that the product is safe.
Q77 Mohammad Yasin: How are you making sure?
Lee Rowley: How am I making sure?
Mohammad Yasin: I am talking about the Department that you represent.
Lee Rowley: We are going to bring forward a set of reform propositions around this. We recognise that the process is not where it should be at the moment, and we are going to bring forward the next steps post Morrell-Day in the coming months. Morrell-Day articulated where there are issues. To go back to the conversation that I had with Natalie a moment ago, we have to make sure that it is proportionate and workable. The last thing that we want to get out of this, given the complexity of the process, is to move from something that is not working and not effective, and which we quite rightly all sit here and say needs to change, to something else that does not really fix the problem we have in front of us. That is why we are taking our time to make sure that it works.
Q78 Mohammad Yasin: How will you ensure that testing houses share test results with each other, so that they know whether a product in front of them has previously failed a safety test?
Lee Rowley: We will come out with our next steps on Morrell-Day in due course, but I am not sure that I can add a great deal more to what I have already said.
Q79 Mohammad Yasin: When?
Lee Rowley: I have already said that we will come out as soon as we are able to.
Q80 Kate Hollern: Minister, there have been a number of delays on when the UK is going to end recognition of CE markings. Currently, we are told it will be June 2025. Are we still on track for that date?
Lee Rowley: Chandru, do you want to just explain where we are on that?
Chandru Dissanayeke: We said that it would be June 2025. The legislation means that CE marking is recognised until further legislation is introduced into the House, and we are not in a position to do that yet.
Q81 Kate Hollern: Are we still on track for June 2025?
Chandru Dissanayeke: We wanted to pick that up as part of our reforms in terms of what the proposals are in relation to ending CE marking.
Q82 Kate Hollern: I will gather that that is a no.
Lee Rowley: I would not gather that. I would gather, as frustrating as it is, that we do intend to say more on it, but we cannot today.
Q83 Kate Hollern: Does that mean that you can tell us what you will replace it with?
Lee Rowley: I am sorry, but I cannot say anything further today. The challenge here—and I apologise to the Committee again—is that we are not far away from being able to make clearer statements on many of these things, but I cannot do it today, unfortunately.
Q84 Kate Hollern: Maybe you can give us a hint. To what degree do you expect the new testing regime to diverge from EU construction product regulations? Will there be massive changes?
Lee Rowley: I am not hugely close to the EU’s reform process. I have been trying to compare what we are doing, but I would not say that I am a huge expert. As I understand it, they are still in the process of reform, so there are still some details to be filled in on exactly where they are intending to go. One of the challenges is that we do not quite know exactly where they are heading.
We are coming forward with our own proposals and next steps out of Morrell-Day, hopefully very soon. We will need to work through how all of that interacts. On testing, there is a reality that there is going to be a set of specific products where the testing capability is not in the UK at the moment, and it will be difficult to replicate it in the UK, because the amount of capital that is required to create it conceptually could be extraordinarily large. We have to build all of that into our thinking about how we make sure that this works when we bring our own safety regime forward.
Q85 Kate Hollern: I am not sure, Minister, but is it correct that material used in Grenfell failed the European test but passed the English test?
Chandru Dissanayeke: That was to do with class 0, if I am not mistaken. There were claims that it passed the English test, but I should also be very clear—and the inquiry ruled on this—that it absolutely failed the functional requirement set out in legislation, which was to resist the spread of fire. Regardless of what test it passed, it was not appropriate to be on the building that it was on.
Q86 Kate Hollern: Maybe that is a really good reason to publish data when materials fail. I recognise that you are concerned about confidentiality within manufacturers, but had it been known that it had failed, there might have been a different outcome.
Lee Rowley: It is a totally legitimate debate to have, Kate, and, when we come forward, that is an important one to have.
Q87 Kate Hollern: It is going to leave concerns that our test may not be quite as rigorous as the European one.
Lee Rowley: I hope that that would not be the case, because what we have to get to at the end point is a robust regime that works and that recognises, builds upon and negates the failures, concerns and gaps that Morrell-Day and others have identified. I hope that, objectively and conceptually, that would not be the case. We then have to make sure that it works, and works in a way that does not create a whole heap of other problems that nobody would want, irrespective of where they sit in the process.
I hope that that would not be the case, but the confidentiality point is a good one. I very much like transparency, and my personal view is that we should be as transparent as possible. Without getting too much into the detail of this, do we need to have a debate in due course about where that threshold should be and at what level? That is a reasonable discussion to have in order to make sure that you are giving space for the product owners and producers to be able to interact with the system properly, but your point is legitimate. We need to make sure that there is sufficient transparency here to give confidence.
Q88 Kate Hollern: Will construction products imported from the European Union need to be tested in UK testing houses to make sure that they are going to meet your regulations?
Lee Rowley: That is something that we will say more on, but I recognise right now that that will be difficult to apply universally, because we do not have some of the very intricate testing capabilities built in the UK, so we are going to have to think about how that all interacts.
Q89 Kate Hollern: It is making me more convinced that June 2025 is a pipe dream. Could CE-marked products manufactured in Northern Ireland be recognised and marketed in Great Britain?
Lee Rowley: We have to conform with the Windsor framework and the information within that, unless Stormont makes a decision to change its approach. We will bring forward proposals that are within the established framework.
Q90 Kate Hollern: Finally, and this is a real concern, what steps have the Government taken to ensure that there is sufficient testing capacity? Is there a plan to develop a workforce?
Lee Rowley: As I say, there is going to be a real challenge in replicating testing capacity in the more specialist end of the discussion. I do not have a specific example, but, conceptually, there is going to be stuff that is not tested very often and may not have been tested within the European market for a while, and replicating that in the UK is going to be a challenge. That does not mean that every single testing is going to be a problem, but I accept that there is a question about how we bring all that together. We then need to work through exactly how testing works. I want to make sure that the outcome is the thing that is focused on, in that these products are safe, in whatever guise they need to be safe. How we do that is an open discussion that we should have.
Kate Hollern: And make sure that the information is transparent.
Lee Rowley: Absolutely.
Q91 Bob Blackman: I am not sure whether you have had a chance to look at this, but one of the considerations is that, in terms of leasehold, under the changes that are being made, which I welcome, to reduce the ground rent either to zero or to a peppercorn, there is the potential for the financial capability of freeholders or some element of the market that controls particularly blocks of flats to collapse.
One of the considerations that I hope you are looking at is the implications for leaseholders when it comes to fire safety changes, if the building owners, the freeholders or whoever have literally gone out of business. They are not getting any stream of income, so they say, “We cannot do any of this work”. Is there going to be a compensation scheme for leaseholders in those circumstances, and coverage of the costs to remediate the buildings?
Lee Rowley: That is what we want to avoid. There is a consultation on ground rents, which either closed yesterday or closes today. That is clearly a contentious consultation, and people in organisations have very strong views on it, so I have to allow the process to complete. I have to allow a proper analysis of what the outcomes are going to be. Even at this late stage, 12 hours before it closes, I would encourage all of those who have indicated concerns to me to provide the greatest level of information and transparency about those concerns, so that we can understand that when we make the decision, whatever the decision is, in the coming weeks. I will struggle to say more on that until the consultation is closed. I have met and will continue to meet freeholders where it is useful to do that. Articulating the issue is important in this.
Q92 Bob Blackman: One of the concerns has been that, when it comes to remediation, be it of cladding or other fire safety issues, the people who are in situ and have a leasehold on their flats are those who seem to suffer most under this. The building owners, developers or people who constructed the buildings may have long gone and have no regard to the buildings themselves, but they have a building that is potentially unsafe. If, as we expect the position to be, the source of potential income for the freeholders of the building is reduced, what will the Government do to ensure that leaseholders are not then suddenly hit with the costs of remediating that building?
Lee Rowley: If I separate that slightly, probably a little more than you want me to, the ground rent consultation will close. We will, in good faith, analyse and work through all of that information and make sure that we understand the consequences. It is very important that people provide that information to us, even at this late stage. The Secretary of State gave his personal view on the Floor of the House, but we are both committed to going through that in the level of detail that it requires.
Semi-separate to that, to your point about complexity around remediation where there is challenge, I hope that the funds that we have set up and the rules within them mean—because it is our intention—that, irrespective of the challenge around ownership, with freeholders coming to the table, not coming to the table or being in difficulty, there are processes whereby individual buildings can still get remediated. We are seeing that. There is a whole heap of complexity within it.
Not to use Tom’s example too much, but The Mill is an example of one of the most complex ones that I have seen, with overseas ownership, going into administration and how all of that plays out. There are some incredibly complicated interactions, but it should not stop the remediation, because there are funds there and where the costs are going can be dealt with at a separate and later stage.
Q93 Mary Robinson: Minister, there are a lot of discussions taking place and a lot of thought going into the testing regime and how to improve this sector. Can we expect a Green Paper or a White Paper on changes to the testing regime? Is this going to be happening?
Lee Rowley: I am so sorry, Mary, not to be able to give you a straight answer. We intend to say more very soon.
Q94 Mary Robinson: I am trying to really pin it down. Is there going to be legislative change?
Lee Rowley: I am so sorry to be unhelpful. Chandru, if there is anything that I am not answering, please do come in. I cannot give you a statement today about exactly what it is going to be, exactly what the process is and exactly what it will lead to, but we recognise that the status quo is not sustainable and that reform is needed. We have already brought forward some of that reform in terms of the OPSS etc, and we are committed to doing more reform. I would expect that there will probably be a legislative element to it, but how that works is part of what we will bring forward in the months ahead.
Q95 Mary Robinson: Legislation gives the weight that is needed for enforcement.
Lee Rowley: Yes, but the important thing is the outcome, so we have to weigh up legislation or regulation and make sure that we are moving the whole system in the right direction. My guess is that legislation will probably be part of that, but we can say more soon, hopefully, on next steps post Morrell-Day.
Q96 Mary Robinson: Meanwhile, we have heard from previous questions that there is a lot of questioning around the construction sector and how it is feeling about this. What is your assessment of the impact of the delays to reform on the construction products sector and on public safety?
Lee Rowley: While I acknowledge the question and am not trying to dismiss it, the operators in this sector have agency. The operators in this sector have ethics. The operators in this sector have responsibilities. As we all know as lawmakers, you cannot legislate on absolutely everything to force good behaviour everywhere. I am speaking broadly and conceptually, as opposed to about just this area. It is incumbent upon those acting within the sectors to make sure that it passes a smell test, and they do not need to wait for anything to do that. They can do that right now. We have lots of examples of where that is occurring. The Government are then going to draw lines around this to make sure that there is improvement based on the poor behaviour that we have seen, and we will say more soon about it.
Q97 Mary Robinson: Some products were mentioned that are being withdrawn as not fit for purpose at the moment. Are you happy or content that none of those products has been used in remediation since Grenfell?
Lee Rowley: I could not give an absolute assurance on that, but I am content that the process requires sign-off, consideration and assessment to make sure that the building’s safety significantly improves and gets above the thresholds that are required in either the CAN or the PAS process.
Q98 Chair: Minister, as well as answering these questions about fire safety, we will probably follow up with one or two more questions to you. Certainly, we await the public response that you are going to make to the Morrell report, and we may have some further questions. Indeed, we may like to have you before us again.
Lee Rowley: I would welcome that, because I recognise that I have not been able to give you all the answers today. I am very happy to come back and talk about it in more detail.
Q99 Chair: That is a helpful offer and we probably will take that up. You also indicated this morning that you were prepared to take some questions about housing. We have been looking at the housing finances of councils and housing associations as a separate inquiry. We were a little surprised that the Housing Minister did not deal with social housing. We always thought that that was one of the responsibilities of a Housing Minister, but we understand that, given how the portfolios have been divided, that is not your particular responsibility, although you have some overall responsibilities for housing finance. We have one or two questions, if you could take them.
Lee Rowley: Baroness Scott is the best person to talk to on this, but I am happy to either try to answer where I can or come back to you on this. There is a necessity around a number of us taking this portfolio, because the huge emphasis on building safety that I am personally committed to takes up an awful lot of time, and I and the Secretary of State want to make sure that sufficient focus is given to social housing and other areas, so Jacob and Jane help on a number of elements of the portfolio. I am not going to be able to give you hugely detailed knowledge of social housing finance, but I can get you that information if I cannot answer it.
Q100 Chair: We have been looking at the funding available for social housing and other forms of affordable housing. As one witness said to us, you cannot have subsidised housing without subsidies. The reality is that, since 2010, grants for social and affordable housing have been significantly reduced. I wonder if you could give us any information—and, if you cannot today, I appreciate that you could probably provide it for us—on the cash and real-term spending on grants for social and affordable housing year by year during that period, and how that money has been divided up in terms of funding for social housing and for other forms of below market rent housing and shared ownership. That would be helpful information.
Lee Rowley: I am very happy to write with that, because it is important to get it right and I do not have that information in front of me today.
Q101 Chair: A particular issue that came up from a number of witnesses was that of below market housing that is not social housing and, therefore, has higher rental values. Is there any reason why the Government’s programme should be targeting most of the grant to that form of housing, which witnesses told us could probably stand alone and be built without subsidy, when the subsidy would be better used on social housing, which cannot be built without subsidy?
Lee Rowley: Subsidy is limited. If the Department and its bodies—Homes England and others—are not getting the balance right, I am very keen to understand where we can improve on that. There is already work going on elsewhere in the non-social housing space, where I am interrogating in detail all of the Homes England programmes. If you think that our subsidy approach is not correct, I am happy, along with Baroness Scott, to look at where we need to change that in any way.
Q102 Chair: That information would be helpful, if you could set it out. We will probably pursue Baroness Scott with that as well. I am not sure whose portfolio this falls within, but the housing infrastructure fund was meant to enable development sites that otherwise might not be viable, so that housing could be built, often in challenging areas, such as older industrial areas, some of which I have in my constituency. Is it not surprising that, since the fund was established in 2017, over £4 billion was allocated but only just over £1 billion has been spent? It cannot be that there is not any need for these funds, but it just does not seem to be happening, does it?
Lee Rowley: There is definitely need. I am in the middle of a deep dive on the housing infrastructure fund. It is the case that the money has been spent more slowly than we were hoping and expecting. The Department has been trying to speed that up for a number of months and years now, and there is a lot of work going on with regard to that.
The Department is not a deliverer. Appointees of individual local authorities are deliverers, and so there will be variation in the delivery. It is absolutely legitimate to ask questions around this. I am doing the same. We have to offset that in a time of economic challenge and of massive inflationary costs. Particularly in the construction sector, timelines are probably always going to be extended because of that, but we are working very hard to make sure that we keep the revised profiles that were put in place on housing infrastructure.
Q103 Chair: How much of that money has been given to local authorities to spend, if they have not spent it?
Lee Rowley: When they are spending, we pay within a matter of weeks. That is part of the conditions of the contract, if I am remembering, and apologies if I am misremembering. We have spent over £1 billion, and £500 million or so is being spent this year.
Q104 Chair: So you are saying that the obstacle is with local authorities. Local authorities know who is able to have the £4 billion, and it has been allocated to them. It is just that they have not spent it. Is that right?
Lee Rowley: I am still learning about all of these things, and housing is a very big portfolio, but my understanding is that there are a number of local authorities to which we have said, “That is not possible to pursue”, because priorities have changed at a local level, or inflation means that it is not possible. For those that are still in the fund, the funds are still available and we are trying to encourage and make sure that that is drawn down as quickly as possible. We want that drawdown to occur by 2026.
Q105 Chair: I am still not quite clear on whether the money has been given to local authorities, whether it has been allocated and they have not spent it, or whether there is still money set in the central pot that has not been allocated and local authorities can bid for.
Lee Rowley: As I understand it, it is paid as it is spent. We pay the money as the local authority requires it, but the local authorities that are in HIF and have committed to building the additional road or whatever know that they are able to do that and are supposed to be getting on with doing that.
Q106 Chair: So there is still money that can be allocated to local authorities that want to put in for new projects.
Lee Rowley: The money is allocated. The individual local authorities are trying to make sure that the projects are completed, so that the money that has been put into the allocations is spent.
Q107 Chair: Is your Department encouraging local authorities to get it spent?
Lee Rowley: Very much so and very actively. I will also be doing the same in the months ahead, as I conclude the deep dive. I have spreadsheets here that I am currently going through to make sure that these things move as quickly as possible.
Q108 Chair: I have a couple of other points about work at local level to try to get more social and affordable housing built. What is the Department doing to try to encourage combined approaches by councils and housing associations at local level so that we get some co-ordinated activity, together with Homes England?
I have a personal interest. In Sheffield, it has been really pleasing to see Homes England starting to take a strategic approach to an area, rather than looking at individual projects, which is really welcome, and coming in and offering advice as well, which is a change. I wonder how far that is now being rolled out, because that involves councils and housing associations working together with Homes England.
Lee Rowley: Homes England is iterating what it does to try to be as strategic as possible. Speaking with Peter Denton, who is the chief executive, I know that the intention is to do it more widely. I can get more information on the specific question that you have asked from Homes England and from Baroness Scott, so that it is represented in the most accurate way.
Q109 Chair: In terms of planning, which is your responsibility, one of the challenges often made is that, if you go to build houses that are not simply market sale, there is often a struggle to purchase land for that objective, because of the price of land and the fact that developers building in the private sector can always come in and pay more for it. Within the NPPF, have you looked at giving directions to local authorities to try to ensure that certain sites in their local plans are allocated for the purpose of building social or more affordable housing?
Lee Rowley: I have not looked at it in the first two months that I have been in. I am always happy to look at suggestions. I will go away and do it. In my initial but not particularly educated view—I need to go and think about it a little bit more, but thinking about it in literally the 10 seconds since you mentioned it—the question, as you will know, is how you make these things viable.
Either you subsidise them—and we have an affordable housing programme that we are currently working through, with whatever comes subsequently, but the subsidy is always finite. Otherwise, we have to make sure that we structure these things in a way that works. As both a councillor and an MP, I have seen the challenge of structuring and making things viable, not just from an affordable housing programme perspective but also from an infrastructure and an improvement of area perspective. That tension is very difficult to reconcile.
Q110 Chair: If some sites were allocated for that purpose, they would not necessarily have to pay as much for the land to build that sort of housing on.
Lee Rowley: Possibly, but, if they are allocated without sufficient subsidy, they may not be viable. What I would not want to do is kill the viability on the basis of the allocation. I do get your point about land value, though.
Q111 Chair: If you could have a look at whether that might be something that local authorities would have to look at in the local plan, that would be helpful.
Lee Rowley: I am very happy to take that away.
Q112 Chair: Finally, on the infrastructure levy, quite a few concerns were raised with us about the potential implications of this and whether it really will deliver the same amount of affordable and social housing as the current 106 arrangements do. There is the commitment that it should do, but there are still concerns about the mechanisms to make sure that it does.
Lee Rowley: I would say two things on that. The first is that we have said that we definitely recognise that we have to get this right and to take care on this. The whole point behind a test and learn approach is that we are taking this in stages. While some people are saying that this is going to take a long time to bring in fully, we are trying to make sure that this comes in and works. Test and learn is the first line of defence on that.
Equally, we recognise that there is a lot more interaction that we want to do with the sector, and we are keen to do that, so a lot more discussion is going to be going on over the coming months with regard to making sure that the infrastructure levy works.
Q113 Chair: What has been said to us is that, while recognising that the test and learn approach is right, because we do not want to get this wrong, it is still going to mean a fairly complicated landscape for developers, which are going to have different arrangements in different parts of the country. Often, authorities next door to each other could have completely different regimes for raising funds for social and affordable housing.
Lee Rowley: That is exactly the reason why we want to continue the discussion and make sure that this works, and to do the test and learn elements. There is going to be an element of that, because there is an element of coming off the current system and going on to the new one. We then have to make sure that the new system works and that the variability within it is proportionate and reasonable for the developers to work through while still achieving the ultimate aim of getting the infrastructure in place that is supposed to be coming.
Q114 Chair: An issue that has been raised is that the infrastructure is likely to raise far more money in some parts of the country than in others. Areas where it does not raise money may have a real need for affordable housing. Is any thought being given to whether there should be some form of redistribution of infrastructure levies as part of the levelling up process?
Lee Rowley: I would have to take that back and talk to my colleague Jacob Young about that. Within the affordable housing programme, there is a recognition of different requirements and needs in different areas. We know that there are viability issues in certain areas that are not present in others, and there is already a substantial amount of Government policy that tries to address that.
Q115 Chair: So you will come back with an answer on that following conversations with Jacob.
Lee Rowley: I am happy to.
Chair: We will follow up with Baroness Scott and some more detailed questions on Monday. We look forward to the further written answers that you are going to give the Committee. Thank you very much, Minister, for coming along and answering a range of questions today. That has been helpful to the Committee.