Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:10 pm on 6 September 2023.
Bernard Jenkin
Chair, Liaison Committee (Commons), Chair, Liaison Committee (Commons), Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on National Policy Statements, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on National Policy Statements, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government
3:10,
6 September 2023
I am sorry; I have no time.
The second conflict that needs to be resolved concerns the role of local authority building control bodies and their private sector counterparts, known as approved inspectors. The Building Safety Act will regulate the private sector approved inspectors but not local authority building control, which was not only responsible for approving the cladding on Grenfell Tower but, I hazard a guess, probably approved the building control on most of the schools built with RAAC.
The main point is that failures such as RAAC and cladding arise because of the failure of the building management safety system, which is endemic to that system. The failures also arise from the failure to find the causes of building safety incidents through a proper independent investigation body that possesses permanent, accumulated expertise that a one-off-public inquiry has to attempt to acquire from scratch.
I hope that amid the politicking, all political parties will recognise that such reforms are necessary in building safety management, or there will be more systemic failures in building safety arising from things such as the wrong cladding and the wrong concrete in the future. I have 15 seconds, if Ian Lavery would like to intervene.