From inquiry to action: The future of housing safety and supply

Seven years on from the Grenfell Tower fire and three months after the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report was published, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner announced this week that the Government will meet all 58 recommendations from the Inquiry. The announcement that seven organisations named in the report as acting with ‘systemic dishonesty’ are to be investigated for professional misconduct has dominated national headlines, but the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement in the Commons, particularly her plans for a single construction regulator, has broader implications for the built environment sector and for those still living with unsafe cladding. 

The Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report’s first recommendation is that a new singular regulator draws together all functions related to the construction industry under one roof. A Regulatory Reform Prospectus on designing a single regulator will be published alongside a consultation later this year but it, and the appointment of a chief construction advisor, will not be implemented until at least 2028.  

The announcement was the springboard for several other consultations. A consultation on a Green Paper to reform the construction products sector is now live and consultations later in the year have been announced for the Building Safety Regulator’s Approved Documents and the introduction of a new Decent Homes Standard.  

Increased regulation and responsibilities for the private sector are dovetailed with a Hillsborough Law that establishes a legal duty of candour for public authorities to disclose the truth. In September Sir Keir Starmer confirmed that this law would be introduced to parliament by April 2025.  

Joe Powell MP, Kensington and Bayswater, brought to light the need for public authorities to be held more accountable, asking Rayner in parliament if she ‘could provide further detail on how she plans to ensure accountability for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, given their culpability before, during and after the fire’.  

The blurred public/private nature of who is responsible for social housing services in the UK was accounted for by the introduction of new access to information requirements for private registered providers and the extension of the Freedom of Information Act to include Tenant Management Organisations.  

Running through Rayner’s speech was a desire to instil a greater respect across the system for the experiences of those living in unsafe accommodation. A commitment to strengthening the voice of social housing residents to call for safer housing has expanded two schemes, the Four Million Homes resident training programme and the Make Things Right communications campaign. The Regulator of Social Housing has also introduced a new Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. These new schemes are all very well, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, Florence Eshalomi argued but it does not go far enough to tackle the root ‘cause of systematic ignorance of tenants’ concerns—that toxic stigma at the heart of our social housing sector’. In her speech in parliament, she went on to highlight the compounded difficulties faced by those with disabilities and called for disabled private renters to have equal access to personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEEPs).  

Building faster and safer 

The elephant in the room is how to marry the need to address systemic safety problems in the sector acknowledged by the Grenfell Inquiry, with the government’s commitment to build 1.5 million homes by 2030. The Government is looking to affordable housing providers and local authorities, both grappling with the cost of building safety remediation, to deliver the new social housing that the country desperately needs. And yet a recent survey led by Southwark Council reported that ‘68% of councils expect to scale back their overall commitments to redevelop or build new council homes’. The question that needs answering is where the money is coming from to ensure local councils, developers, and registered housing providers can remediate decades of unsafe buildings whilst building new homes at pace.