Many thanks to those who have contacted me about fire safety.
Ensuring everyone has a safe and high-quality home must be a top priority. A great deal of progress has been made to improve our housing, with the share of non-decent and unsafe homes seeing decline in the last decade. Nonetheless, much more remains to be done to ensure everyone can feel safe in their homes.
I welcome the work underway to address fire safety concerns. Following the Hackitt Review, a ban on flammable cladding in high rise buildings and desktop fire safety studies was announced. It is also encouraging to see that £5 billion in funding has been made available to cover remedial cladding work on social and private housing high rise buildings across the country, ensuring all residents can feel safe.
Future generations will be protected through tightened building safety regulation later this year and a review will be held on the construction products regime to prevent malpractice in the sector.
The Building Safety Bill will also put in place enhanced regulations for building safety and ensure that residents have a greater say in safety regimes. It also establishes a Building Safety Regulator to develop and pilot new approaches to regulation to deliver a stronger and better regime that benefits everyone, and drive culture change among regulators, the construction sector and building owners. It will oversee the regulation and performance of all buildings, delivering specific interventions for buildings requiring enhanced safety measures.
The Fire Safety Bill will help address risks with external wall systems and fire doors and strengthen enforcement powers for fire and rescue authorities, ensuring that irresponsible building owners are held to account. I am also encouraged by the commitments set out in the Charter for Social Housing Residents, which raise the standard for social housing to meet the needs and aspirations of residents around the country. I am glad that safety, quality, transparency and redress are put front and centre.
