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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:32 pm on 21 March 2023.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:32, 21 March 2023

Thank you very much, Jane Dodds, for that set of questions. The last one first. We can't interfere in existing court proceedings; we just can't. So, if there's an existing court proceeding, that will have to see its route through the courts. I have absolutely no detail in front of me about which court proceedings are which, or what stage they're at, or any of the legal arguments you'd need to have an understanding of to be able to—. We have no locus to intervene in that, so, I'm afraid I can't do anything about that. 

We have pressed the developers to remediate all of the buildings we're aware of, but I'm aware of at least two buildings that are in extensive litigation that probably will have to see that litigation through to its end, whatever that end is. I have no idea whether it's settleable or anything else, I'm afraid. It's partly why we didn't want to implement the sections that are being discussed all the time, because when people start court action under those sections, then it becomes even more immensely complicated than before. And actually, this is a very straightforward way of doing that—that we intervene with the developers, we give ourselves a contractual relationship with that developer, and the developer is then in a contractual relationship with us, the Welsh Government, and then, if they don't carry out that contractual arrangement to our satisfaction, then we have good legal grounds to go after them. And that's exactly the position we've wanted to get into, and it's taken us a while to do that, but I'm very pleased that we're there now. And then, as I said to Mabon ap Gwynfor, we will then need to also ensure that the work is done properly by skilled people with the right supply chain, and all the rest of it.  

And just to get this number right—I think Mabon mentioned a number—. Just bear with me a second. Yes, we've got over 270 expressions of interest on 163 sites. So, you can see that we simply do not have the supply chain and the workforce to just suddenly do all of them, so we will have to carefully calibrate that. We will try and take a worst-first approach, and so on. So, more detail of that to follow, but we are asking the developers to do that as speedily as possible, and that's why I'm pleased to have put the loans in place as well, because I don't want any further excuses. So, there's no excuse; the money is there, the survey is done, we know what the work needs to do—all we need now to do is ensure that the skilled contractors are in place and able to get the supplies they need to do the work, and we'll be doing that as the next phase.