Ministers are to appoint the UK’s first chief inspector of buildings in reforms prompted by the Grenfell Tower disaster and the discovery that thousands of other high-rise buildings breach fire safety regulations.
The inspector will lead a national regulator of building safety that will also police a system to designate an “accountable person” for each high-rise building. They will be obliged to respond to residents’ complaints after the tenants and leaseholders of Grenfell Tower said their fears about the safety of their homes were ignored by their landlords before the fire on 14 June 2017, which killed 72 people.
The Grenfell Action Group community blog famously published a post in November 2016 that said “only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation”.
The regulator promises new complaints handling requirements “to make sure effective action is taken where concerns are raised”.
“It will ensure that high-rise buildings and the people who live in them are being kept safe and will have new powers to raise and enforce higher standards of safety and performance across all buildings,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government ahead of the publication of the draft building safety bill on Monday. “The regulator will appoint a panel of residents who will have a voice in the development of its work.”
The move comes as the public inquiry into the Grenfell disaster continues to hear evidence of how the designers and builders of the disastrous recladding of the tower managed to erect a system that breached building codes but still won approval from the local authority’s building inspectors.
This week, it will hear from Simon Lawrence, a manager for Rydon Maintenance Limited, the main contractor.
One of the architects told the inquiry earlier this year that the way in which combustible materials were sold for use on the building was like “masquerading horse meat as beef lasagne”.
The new regulator will oversee the safety and standard of all buildings, directly assure the safety of higher-risk buildings, and will be tasked with improving the competence of people responsible for managing and overseeing building work.
“These are the biggest changes to building safety legislation for nearly 40 years, and they will raise standards across the industry and ensure building owners have nowhere to hide if they break the rules,” said Lord Greenhalgh, the building safety and fire minister.