Alex Norris column: My important role in helping to make our buildings safe

I’ll still be responsible for local growth, the job of rejuvenating high streets and town centres across the country and finally delivering on the promise of “levelling up”, but I’m now also responsible for building safety. I’m proud to take up this incredibly important role, which includes working on building safety and regulations, and leading the Government’s response to the to the Grenfell Tower tragedy and working with all those affected.

Too many buildings across the country still have unsafe cladding. In fact, more than seven years after the Grenfell tragedy, thousands of people are still living with unsafe cladding.

That’s why this week, I was proud to unveil the Government’s Remediation Acceleration Plan, our strategy to tackle the continuing problem of people having to live in homes with flammable cladding. This Plan will speed up the removal of the cladding, put deadlines in place for dealing with it, and ramp up penalties for landlords who don’t live up to their obligations.

Only 30 per cent of identified buildings with unsafe cladding have been fixed, and there are thousands of buildings where we still don’t know if they’re safe or not. This is obviously not good enough. Under these plans, all buildings over 18m tall must be made safe by the end of 2028, with those over 11 m tall remediated or with a firm date for completion by the end of 2029.

With 32 per cent of buildings identified in 2020 yet to begin work, it is clear that too many landlords are dragging their feet on keeping their tenants safe.

The Government expects work to begin on high-rise residential buildings by March and, going forward, landlords will face severe penalties for not getting on with this vital work. Already, our Recovery Strategy Unit is seeking to recover up to £72 million from building owners and there will be more to come.

Local councils, fire and rescue authorities and the Building Safety Regulator will also all be given new powers of enforcement and funding to tackle more cases.

Throughout the remediation process, far too much stress and uncertainty has fallen on the shoulders of blameless residents trapped in buildings with fire safety issues.

We will be supporting them and doing everything we can to mitigate the burdens that they face, in terms of their safety and finances. Inspections will be carried out to make sure that landlords are keeping residents and workers safe throughout the remediation process.

And we’ll tackle the unacceptably high insurance premiums they face by working with insurers to explore the possibility of providing government support to lower bills while remediation takes place.

I know how important the work of building safety is to people, to everyone who deserves to live in a home which is safe and particularly to those who have suffered because of buildings that weren’t built safely.

I will work hard to deliver on the promises we have made to right those wrongs.

And finally, as this is my last column of the year, I wanted to take a little bit of space to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. As always, I’ve felt incredibly privileged to be able to represent you in Parliament this year and I’m looking forward to writing to you again next year.