On Tuesday morning, Dr Al Pinkerton MP led a Westminster Hall debate entitled “Building safety remediation of residential buildings.”
The debate focused attention on three areas that will be very familiar to anyone who has followed the building safety crisis: protections for residents under the post-Grenfell regime, the operation and impact of PAS 9980, and the position of non-qualifying leaseholders.
All three lead us back to one much bigger question.
Nearly a decade after Grenfell, is the system really protecting residents?
Dr Pinkerton has previously made his concerns very clear. When applying for the debate, he argued that many people continue to live in dangerous buildings and that some of the legislation and protocols introduced since Grenfell have actually crystallised some of the injustices residents face.
That will sound painfully familiar to many people who watch Cladding Matters.
We have spent months talking about Royal Artillery Quays and the experiences of residents who have challenged decisions, asked questions, commissioned their own evidence and demanded answers from those responsible for keeping them safe.
There is protection written into legislation. There are remediation schemes. There are regulators, standards and processes.
Yet where does the resident sit amongst all of this?
That brings us to PAS 9980.
PAS 9980 provides the methodology used for Fire Risk Appraisals of External Walls. It plays an important role in determining the level of fire risk and what remedial or mitigation measures may be considered appropriate. It is also used within government remediation schemes.
We have repeatedly questioned PAS 9980 on Cladding Matters.
The concern is that assessing whether a risk can be regarded as tolerable or managed is very different from asking whether a building was constructed correctly and whether known defects should simply be put right.
That distinction deserves proper scrutiny.
If something was built unlawfully or does not meet the standards that should have applied, should the starting point really be whether the resulting risk can somehow be managed?
Then we have the people who fall outside some of the leaseholder protections.
Non-qualifying leaseholders can find themselves in a very different position from qualifying leaseholders. In certain circumstances they can potentially remain liable for remediation costs arising from building safety defects they had absolutely no part in creating.
That raises another uncomfortable question.
Why should someone's level of protection from a historic building safety failure depend upon their leaseholder status?
The Westminster debate may have lasted only 90 minutes, yet the problems being discussed have affected people's lives for years.
For us, the important thing now is what comes next.
Will the concerns raised in Westminster result in changes? Will PAS 9980 receive the scrutiny many residents believe it deserves? Will the gaps in leaseholder protection finally be addressed?
Most importantly, will residents themselves finally be listened to?
Join Gareth Wax, Steve Day and Hamish McLay on Cladding Matters, today at 1pm, as we look at the Westminster debate, PAS 9980, the protection of residents and what it could mean for people still caught up in the building safety crisis.
Because after years of reviews, legislation, assessments and remediation programmes, residents are entitled to ask a very simple question.
Are we actually safer, or have we simply created another system residents have to fight?
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