I will now move on to some of the key areas in our report. I am not intending to go through each of our recommendations, but instead will focus on building management, the need to update fire safety legislation and the need for robust building control. Effective building management is critical to ensuring fire safety in high-rise residential buildings. We were reassured by the evidence we took from managing agents. Those who gave evidence to us clearly took their responsibilities seriously and provided us with evidence as to how they ensured the safety of their buildings. But we know we only heard from a section of the market. We are concerned that there may be those managing buildings who may not have the sufficient levels of competence and experience, or may cut corners to reduce costs. We therefore made recommendation 1: this calls for regulation of agents who manage high-rise residential buildings. We appreciated this could be complex and introducing such regulation could take some time. Therefore, in the interim, we suggested looking at whether Rent Smart Wales could take on board this role. I'm pleased that the Government accepted this recommendation. In their response, they detailed the reviews, looking at broader leasehold reform, due to report by the summer. It would be good if the Minister today could give a clear commitment that the implementation of recommendations arising from the reviews will be prioritised so that we can start to see changes taking effect at the earliest opportunity. I acknowledged the Minister's comments that the interim measures we have suggested may not work in practice, but, at this stage, can she provide further details about what steps can be taken in the interim to address our concerns?

I will now move on to issues relating to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. We have been calling for it to be revised since we first started looking at this issue in July 2017. It was an area of significant concern then and it continues to be so. As a committee, we feel that more urgency is needed from the Welsh Government. While we appreciate that the Assembly did not have competence over the subject matter of the Order until April 2018, there is now the opportunity to seek to reform or replace it as soon as possible.

In recommendation 3, we call for new legislation to replace the fire safety Order to be introduced in this Assembly term. We also highlighted areas that we feel the new legislation should cover. The Minister agrees with us that the Order needs to be radically reformed or replaced but states that this is a complex issue and time is needed to give consideration to ensure that any new system is effective and joined up. However, it is frustrating to see that this may not happen in the current Assembly. This is about ensuring the regulations that govern the safety of buildings in which people live are fit for purpose, and I continue to hold that the Government should make a clear commitment to deliver on this legislative change by the end of this Assembly as a priority in the legislative programme.

Moving on to some of the specifics about the fire safety Order, we heard in July 2017, and continued to hear in autumn of last year, that it was unclear as to whether the front doors to flats, which play an important role in preventing the spread of a fire, came under its remit. This was of particular concern because residents often make modifications to their front door, including replacing them with doors that may not offer any fire protection at all. This clearly could have an impact on not just the residents living in the individual flat but also their neighbours by undermining the integrity of fire safety measures put in place. The Welsh Government were clear that they believed these front doors came under the fire safety Order, but they acknowledged that this had not been tested in the courts. The fire services themselves were unclear and the legal advice we received was that the Order would not cover front doors. So, we were concerned about the significant ambiguity and lack of clarity on this important issue. This was just one of the changes we wanted to see made when the Order is replaced.

Finally, Dirprwy Lywydd, I want to talk about the role of building regulations. One of the most consistent themes that featured throughout this work was the general acceptance that there can be a significant difference between the building as designed on paper and the one that is actually built. This disconnect can happen for a number of reasons, including that unforeseen difficulties and challenges may be faced when turning designs into reality. But of more concern to us was the inspection regime, which seems to be under-resourced, and there seems to be limited powers to monitor what is happening on individual building sites. We heard from one developer how they tried to minimise this disconnect by employing the architect in a quality assurance role throughout construction. But we were unable to identify if this practice was widespread throughout the industry or not, because only one developer gave evidence to us. This was disappointing and meant that we were unable to better understand what developers are doing or not doing. We therefore made recommendation 8, which calls for the Welsh Government to assess the effectiveness of quality assurance throughout the construction stage, and whether best practice should be mandated through regulation. The Government accepted this recommendation but have highlighted that primary responsibility for the safety of a building sits with those involved in its design and construction. We understand and agree with this point that regulation and building control play an important part in ensuring public safety.

Clearly, the Hackitt review has provided a detailed set of recommendations for changes to the building regulation process and system in England, and we look forward to seeing the Welsh Government's response to these recommendations. While we acknowledge that the Minister cannot commit to much at this stage of the expert group's work, we would urge her to ensure that, once the group has made its recommendations, the Government response and implementation is done with real pace and urgency.

As all will agree, Dirprwy Lywydd, this is simply too important an issue to allow it to drift, and I now look forward to Members' contributions.