UK Parliament / Open data

Social Housing and Building Safety

Proceeding contribution from Eddie Hughes (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Thursday, 9 June 2022. It occurred during Debate on Social Housing and Building Safety.

I am delighted to make that commitment. My hon. Friend mentioned the complexity of the EWS1 form and, as a civil engineer and a member of the Chartered Institute of Building, I am a keen enthusiast for such technical detail. I look forward to that discussion.

It was good to hear the valuable observation from the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) that Members in all parts of the House are committed to tackling these problems together. She is right that we

often do not have consensus, so it is welcome that we have it here. I will continue to consult on and consider remediation costs, and I will make sure we have discussions with social housing providers to come to an appropriate conclusion on how those costs can be covered.

The hon. Lady referred to the work of Kwajo Tweneboa and ITV. To a degree it is sad that we need people outside the House to highlight these points to us, but I am grateful to them for doing so. A number of housing providers are ahead of our legislation and are already upping their game. Many housing providers provide excellent service and high-level accommodation in safe and secure properties for their tenants, but just one case such as we have seen highlighted by Kwajo Tweneboa or ITV is one too many. We need to address that so nobody feels it is appropriate to provide poor-quality accommodation.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) mentioned PEEPs. The Government have now committed to undertake a new consultation. This will include a proposal called “emergency evacuation information sharing,” which would require persons responsible for high-risk buildings to assess the needs of their most vulnerable residents and to consider what might reasonably be done to mitigate any fire safety risks.

The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) mentioned problems experienced by residents in the Gateway building, which I understand has made a successful application to the building safety fund.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

715 cc1010-1 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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