4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Building Safety

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:50 pm on 28 June 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:50, 28 June 2022

Thank you, Mike. You know I've met with a number of the residents and yourself in the buildings affected in your constituency, and we're very anxious that those residents who've done the right thing are properly looked after in this scheme as well, so that's yet another complexity. You highlight the problem of the multiplicity of different arrangements. There is one building in my own constituency that you're very familiar with where absolutely everybody has gone bankrupt, including the designer, three lots of developers, the insurance companies—it's just an absolute disaster. And that's why we have to have a backstop for those people, because if we were relying on developers to do that, there is no such entity left in order to take that on. That's why the Welsh Government is prepared to put public money into doing it, because for some people there isn't anyone. 

The complexities of the single purpose vehicle building company that bears the name of a large corporation on it but actually, legally, is a separate company is one of the biggest issues that we've had to face. Rhys, I think, mentioned trying to stop people having further contracts and so on, but when you go into the legals of it, they're not the same company, and that's proved a real problem. So, we rely on the UK Government to change some of the law that isn't devolved to Wales around protections in those circumstances, in the Building Safety Act 2022 and other areas, so that we can do that. And we will be looking to improve the way that we enable people to apply and execute planning consent—sorry, I'm talking to two different people now here. Basically, what we're saying is a duplicate of what the English Government is looking at, which is to stop people being able to take advantage of a planning consent they already have if they have unremediated buildings bearing their corporate name. But it's more complicated than just saying, 'This company can't do it', because there is a multiplicity of them.

So, I agree with all of that. I completely agree with the reform of leasehold, but as I said to Rhys, one of the things we have to do now is learn from the Scottish experience, because we had been very attracted to that, but actually they've had a number of problems with that system as well.