Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
The Minister and the Secretary of State will both know that Salford has had a large number of buildings affected by the building safety crisis. That has meant years of worry about safety for residents, who have often faced eye-watering bills they cannot afford or been trapped in a home they cannot sell—all for a crisis that they did not cause. Before I move on with my contribution, I place on record my thanks to two key organisations and individuals. The first is Salford council. In the early days after the horrors of Grenfell, it was one of the first local authorities to act fast and think later in removing dangerous cladding from its council properties. It faced years of legal wranglings trying to recoup the costs from the developers, but it did the right thing and made sure that residents’ safety came first. Secondly, I place on record my special thanks to two special individuals: Darren Matthews and Mandy Sandhu. They were the first residents to come to me about the building safety crisis and a building called Transport House. They led an amazing campaign when they were faced with eye-watering bills of £97,000 each to pay for building safety remediation in their building. They secured the costs that they needed to carry out the remediations from the developers and the Building Safety Fund, and they acted as an inspiration to many other campaign organisations across Salford—and there were many. It is welcome to see the Government seeking to fill many of the apparent gaps in the Building Safety Act 2022. However, I will mention a few points that I hope the Minister and the Government will take forward as the Bill progresses through the House. First, on continued delays at the Building Safety Regulator, I know that the Government have introduced a plan to speed up applications, but in many cases it is not yet working. One building in Salford, Quebec Building, has faced significant delays. One resident there told me: “Our mortgage interest is now 8.9%. Our provider refuses us a new product until remediations are done. We cannot sell as ‘non qualifying leaseholders’ as the status carries on for new owners <span id="245" class="column-number" data-column-number="245"></span>which might mean liability for payment for some remediations. I am 65 years old and wanting to enjoy retirement and my husband has uncurable cancer and the stress is not helping. We just cannot sustain all this.” I implore the Minister and the Government to review, as a priority, what the blockages are at the Building Safety Regulator and ensure that it is properly staffed and resourced to tackle the backlog. Secondly, Salford has had huge issues with non-cladding-related fire safety defects, from non-compliant wooden balconies all the way through to insufficient internal fire doors. Residents have been left wrangling with developers in a David and Goliath-style legal battle, with the cost of temporary fire safety provisions ramping up service charges year on year and huge insurance bills to boot. Many have ultimately been forced to foot the bill for remediation themselves, which is simply unjust. The issue had already been raised in 2025 by the National Fire Chiefs Council, but the Bill still excludes non-cladding fire safety defects, so that must be addressed. I welcome the comments made by the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box, as they suggest that the issue is on her radar. I look forward to seeing the details on that work going forward, and perhaps the Minister will divulge a little more detail in her summing up. Thirdly, though the Bill places legal requirements on building owners and responsible entities, developers signed up to the developer remediation contract are exempt. I know why: because the Government assume that being part of the DRC is a sufficient carrot. Yet it is worrying, given that we know that the auditing of assessments at DRC buildings is very thin on the ground in practice, and as End Our Cladding Scandal notes, there is a raft of conclusions “based on assumption rather than test evidence.” Worse still, we know that enforcement is weak. Property Week<em> </em>has already stated: “developer-led remediation continues to progress too slowly, with only 10% of projects complete and nearly 60% still awaiting agreed scopes of work.” Put simply, ruling out developers from the new remediation duty in the Bill but imposing it on resident-controlled entities sadly highlights just how skewed and unfair the system still is. That is a crucial issue that I hope the Government will look at getting right. It cannot be right to continue to place significant burdens on the shoulders of volunteer leaseholders, especially in buildings owned by leaseholders, which were ruled out of the leaseholder protections. The Bill makes no mention of protecting them at the moment, nor does it close gaps affecting non-qualifying leaseholders, shared owners and buildings below 11 metres. Those people are left fending for themselves. Again, the Secretary of State highlighted that she seeks to address those things, and I look forward to seeing the detail in due course. I will briefly make a final point on the wider issue of the capacity of fire authorities to respond to high-rise blazes. In 2025, I wrote to the Government to highlight significant understaffing, often due to poor pay, which was having an impact on the recruitment and retention of firefighters. That has resulted in situations where vehicles are sometimes sent out without a full complement <span id="246" class="column-number" data-column-number="246"></span>of five firefighters riding, where vehicles are deployed elsewhere to compensate for equipment or staffing gaps, or where vehicles simply cannot be deployed at all due to there not being enough staff to crew or repair them. Salford’s firefighters and appliances are frequently directed to surrounding boroughs to tackle high-rise blazes because there are not enough fire vehicles available at that time. That results in fewer firefighters on the ground in the early stages of an incident in Salford, which greatly increases the risks for everyone involved. At this time of year, with bonfire night approaching, the situation becomes more acute. I had three asks of Government in 2025, and I repeat them again today. First, they should co-ordinate with the Chancellor—we have the Budget tomorrow, so they will have to get in quick—to reverse the cuts and invest in the future of fire and rescue services with additional central Government funding. Secondly, they should urgently bring forward the plan to reintroduce national standards to remove the postcode lottery of incident responses and hold fire chiefs accountable. Lastly, they should give firefighters a fair say through a new advisory body that includes trade union representation, and powers and resourcing to investigate fires of special interest. The Bill is very welcome, and it is definitely a good starting place for identifying the gaps, but there is a long way to go. I hope that we will now have a collective and collegiate conversation about how we can get the final version of the Bill spot on.