4. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: The Building Safety Regime White Paper

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:31 pm on 19 January 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:31, 19 January 2021

Yes, absolutely, Mike. As I said, your heart goes out to people who are stuck in the aftermath of a regime that has not been fit for purpose. The whole point of this new regime is to draw a line in the sand and to make it much easier to get it right first time for developers and builders, and very much harder to get it wrong. So, you know, it works both ways. And then there's a whole system of enforcement and ultimate responsibility for various things, which is not at all clear in the current set-up. You'll be aware that my own constituency also has a large number of buildings that are caught in the same plight, and a large number of people—Senedd Members—have written to me about constituents in their own patches who've got all kinds of problems with it. So, we are working very hard indeed on trying to work our way through the really hideously complex legal issues that arise about contractual entitlements, insurance, competing claims for who's responsible for what and so on. And there is a whole series of complications around companies that have gone bankrupt or insurance clauses and so on that I'm very happy to talk through with your residents. 

What it has been necessary to do is it's been necessary to meet with groups of residents in particular blocks, because each block presents a unique set of legal difficulties, because they're all structured slightly differently and so on. So, it's even difficult to produce a generic one-size-fits-all scheme for them. But we're very happy to do that, Mike. So, if you want to invite me to come and meet with the residents, then I can certainly work through their current problems, but, obviously, the piece in front of us today is to make sure that those problems do not arise in the future.