1. Will the Welsh Government make a statement on the fire safety of student accommodation in Wales following last week's fire at the University of Bolton? 365

Yes. We continue to work with all high-rise residential building owners and managing agents, our partners in the fire and rescue services and local authorities, to ensure necessary building checks are carried out. The fire in Bolton highlights the importance of joint working and robust risk assessment of all buildings.

Minister, the fire was said to have spread rapidly up the high-pressure laminate panels on the outside of the building, and I think anyone who saw pictures would have been very, very alarmed by the way it did engulf the building and just its rapidity. I'm grateful to Cardiff University, incidentally, for sending us an e-mail, having had notice of this question, on the condition of their buildings. I think that's welcome. But I am particularly worried for students who are living in the private, purpose-built student accommodation that has expanded rapidly over the last few years. Last week, I note also the Fire Brigades Union warned that HPL cladding was more widespread than the material found at Grenfell Tower. It's also been stated in July by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that HPL cladding should be removed from high-risk blocks if it was combined with combustible insulation. So, I wonder if we've taken a similar policy in Wales, and, if we haven't, whether it's your intention to do so.

We've written out to all higher education institutions in Wales. I've written to all local authorities, so Kirsty Williams has written to all HEIs. I was pleased to see the response from Cardiff, but we have asked all of the vice-chancellors across Wales to provide us with similar information. We have been doing quite a lot of work before the Bolton fire, you will be reassured to know, where we've been in contact with everyone that we were able to be in contact with. I can't say that that's absolutely everybody, because we aren't necessarily certain that we've got quite everybody. But we've written out to all high-rise building owners and managing agents, where we have the contact details, highlighting to them the relevant findings from the recent Grenfell phase 1 inquiry report and asking them to ensure that their residents are clear on what action they should take in the event of a fire.

The unfortunate events of last weekend in Bolton are a timely reminder to us all of the need to ensure the highest levels of attention are paid to fire safety in residential property, particularly in high-rise properties with multiple occupants. David Melding will know that the investigation is ongoing as to exactly what happened at the Cube, but what's already apparent is that the dynamic management of potential risk is key to ensuring the safety of residents in the event of a fire. Whilst that fire was devastating and did look—the pictures of it crawling up the outside were particularly awful, considering what we all now know about Grenfell, but it does show that people were able to evacuate safely. It doesn't take anything away from the devastating loss of personal possessions and so on, but they were able to evacuate, and it does show that the current system, although flawed, does work.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service raised concerns about the building with the managing agents, who took appropriate measures to revise their evacuation strategy ahead of putting in place remediation work. So, actually, they had done the right thing, and, fortunately, the residents were able to get out very safely on that night, although, as I say, that's not to take away the devastation of any fire.

On the night of that fire, the fire service responded with speed, fighting not only the fire quickly and efficiently, but also supporting a safe and swift evacuation. Fortunately, as I said, although the loss of personal possessions is always devastating, injuries were minimal.

What's important to understand is that—so, we've written out to everybody to say this—dynamic fire systems need to be in place. I'm not a personal expert in this, of course, so we've got our fire safety chiefs looking at this and writing and ensuring that building managers and owners are dynamic in their response to fire safety. So, my understanding of this is that it is, where compartmentation has worked, still the right thing to stay put, but buildings need to be inspected very regularly indeed to make sure that is still the right advice, and, if it isn't the right advice, then what to do if the compartmentation—that's really hard to say—has failed or is thought to be inadequate in any way.

I'd just like to reiterate the point that containing and extinguishing a fire in a flat where it occurs is safer than organising a mass evacuation, especially in high-rise buildings, where firefighting rescues can be particularly challenging and where evacuating large numbers of people via a single staircase can impede the firefighting effort coming up the building and create its own risks of crushing and trampling. All new and converted blocks of flats have long been constructed so that they have more than one exit in that way, so that we have a route for the fire people to get in and an evacuation route as well.

But 'stay put' reflects the intrinsic fabric of all high-rise residential buildings; it is not the policy of the fire and rescue services, the Government or anyone else. It has kept countless residents of flats safe over the years. There's no evidence at all so far from the Grenfell Tower inquiry that would justify a change to that general approach other than to say that we need a dynamic response to that, and, if there is evidence that the compartmentation of a building is compromised, the response may need to shift very rapidly from 'stay put' to 'evacuate'.

This matter has been raised with me as higher education spokesperson for Plaid Cymru by the NUS, who are concerned about how fast some of these flats are being built, and the boom that is happening also here in Wales, and how that affects students. They've told me that, sometimes, students are put into flats without the whole accommodation having been finished, and therefore fire safety processes are not being properly explained to those students when they first move in. So, I'd like to understand, if that's happening, what communication you've had with universities, who are responsible, ultimately, for the welfare of those students who may be moving into half-built accommodation processes. Some of these landlords are very fast to take money off students but very slow to make any form of changes if there are complaints, so I'd also want to be reassured that, where private landlords are operating and this type of cladding is in existence, what the nature of the conversations are with them, because my understanding is that standards for student accommodation are still lower than other forms of accommodation, and it seems ridiculous to me that students would be placed in more unsafe accommodation than the general population. So, I'd want to seek more clarity on that.

Also, you and I will know from local matters that this has happened closer to home in Swansea, where disruption was caused by a fire in the Omnia accommodation block in the Oldway development, so I'd like to understand what conversations have happened ongoing from that so that we can learn from it, and that it won't be repeated again. It comes back to the issue of payment as well—I know, I was on the committee, previously, that's chaired by John Griffiths—in relation to the fact that some of these people who are living in these private flats are being forced to pay £39,000 in many occasions to make their flats safe, when they simply can't afford it. Is there not a way that Welsh Government can support those flat owners, be it by a Government loan or grant, to help them be able to afford these updates to their flats so that they're not left in huge amounts of debt because they've had to deal with a problem that wasn't of their own making?

Dealing with that last point first, I'm very keen to find a mechanism that doesn't penalise the actual people living in the flats, where it is clearly the fault of the construction company or some other obvious causation. Bethan Sayed will know that that's not always as simple as it sounds to establish, and we have an example in Swansea, which all of us from Swansea are aware of, where it's been immensely complex to figure out who exactly is responsible for which bit. We are working very hard to put a system in place that allows us to do that, but I'm very reluctant that people should have to pay for the mistakes of somebody who's made a great deal of money out of building a building that is inadequate. So, we are still working on trying to work out a way of getting loans and grants out to people in circumstances where we're not, effectively, rewarding bad behaviour. So I'm happy to keep the Senedd updated on our conversation around what we can do exactly, because people do want to be safe, but, on the other hand, they also want to have some equity in the property that they've bought, so I'm trying to keep that right. We're working very hard to try and walk the very complex path of trying to get that right.

We don't have a complete set of data as to the type of exterior façade of all high-rises—by which we mean 18 metres plus buildings in Wales—but we know that there are at least 10 high-rise buildings with HPL cladding. As David Melding alluded to, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they're flammable. Actually, a very complex system, including how the insulation has been put in, whether the fire bricks are there, what the rest of the construction of the building is, makes a big difference to whether it is or isn't considered to be a fire risk. So, we're working with partners to try and improve the information we've got, and we intend to legislate anyway for this. We've already been looking at this, as you know, through a review of our Bill and regulations and a number of things that we're looking at for that.

We have written out to all HEIs asking them to give us back information for all of their students, not just the ones that are in student accommodation supplied by the higher education institute, and we're also continuing to work with local authorities to keep our information up to date so that we can understand exactly where we are with that. We have been doing this for some time, not just in response to the Bolton fire; we've written out several times to local authorities and so on to keep this under review. Once again, we have an example of how important it is to make sure that we do get this right for the future.

I would just like to say, just to pay tribute to the fire service in Bolton, who clearly did the right thing on the night and put the right rescue arrangements in place—not only fighting a fire, but evacuating the students with all but minor injuries. But your heart does go out to people who've lost all of their personal possessions and who find themselves in that position.

But it is important to understand, and I do really very much want to emphasise this, that the system for evacuation should be provided to tenants and owners when they go into a high-rise block in multiple occupation, and we are about to write out to everyone, through Rent Smart Wales and all the other contacts that we have, making sure that people renew that. So, if you've lived somewhere for four years, you may well have forgotten what the information was that you got, if you got it in the first place. So, we're asking people to renew that—renew the information. And, Bethan, if you have examples of people being moved into half-built buildings, where they're not being given the right information about fire safety and evacuation, if you'd kindly give me that I can look into it further.

Thank you very much, Minister.