Statement
My Honourable Friend the Minister for Building Safety, Fire and Democracy (Samantha Dixon MBE MP) has today made the following statement:
An effective and efficient building control system underpins the fundamental safety of homes and communities across the country, built on the expertise of skilled professionals. Today I announce further steps the Department is taking to make sure this system is working effectively and supporting our ambitious remediation and housebuilding targets.
This will restore confidence in the work done to ensure safety in the building sector and boost the housing supply and the improved operation of the Building Safety Regulator’s Gateway regime.
Today, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is launching a consultation on improving proportionality and safety outcomes in the higher-risk building (HRB) control regime. This consultation is seeking views on how building work in existing higher-risk buildings is categorised, to make sure the application requirements reflect the scale and complexity of the work. We are committed to making sure the higher-risk regime is applied in a proportionate way without compromising on safety. It must strike the right balance between robust oversight of safety critical works and enabling safer building works to proceed efficiently and without undue delays.
Alongside this, MHCLG is announcing a £70m Building Professional Workforce Programme to address shortages of capacity and capability in two safety-critical areas of the built environment: £55m for building control and £15m for the fire engineering profession. These professions play a key role in making sure building work is delivered in accordance with the Building Regulations and that engineering solutions protect people and mitigate harm to the built environment in the event of fire.
Our funding will enable the recruitment and training of up to 700 new building inspectors to increase overall capacity, the training of more building inspectors to Class 3 to enable them to work on HRBs, and the expansion of masters level education for fire engineers. This takes forward the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, in line with our recently published next steps on fire engineering profession reform.
These announcements form part of a wider programme to keep people safe in the buildings where they live, work, and visit. As part of this, a consultation was launched today for fire risk assessors. A separate statement has been laid providing further detail on these proposals.
Our priority remains, as it must, in ensuring the collective safety of residents in buildings across the country, while speeding up progress on crucial building work, such as cladding remediation and delivering the new homes this country urgently needs.
The consultation on proposed changes to HRB categorisation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proportionality-in-building-control-categorisation-of-higher-risk-building-work
We will announce further details on availability of the Building Profession Workforce Programme funding in due course.