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The Week in Housing: social landlords need to be ready for the Building Safety Bill changes
A weekly round-up of the most important headlines for housing professionals
Good afternoon.
Monday saw the publication of the Building Safety Bill in its final form before it makes its journey through parliament and towards Royal Assent.
While much of the commentary and coverage was focused on the lack of protections for leaseholders within its 218 pages for leaseholders, the document contains significant changes that will revolutionise the way buildings are designed, built, managed and lived in for years to come.
In truth, the bill was always going to be more forward-looking to overhaul the current building safety regime, which has been exposed as horribly inadequate by the Grenfell Tower fire and subsequent building safety scandal.
Within the bill there are wide-ranging changes that housing associations and councils need to be aware of.
From the introduction of building safety managers, to the new golden thread for a building’s lifecycle, to the requirements of the new Building Safety Regulator – which will oversee the new regime and punish those that do not comply more severely than ever before – the sector needs to pay attention.
To ensure that our readers are up to date, Inside Housing’s news team spent Tuesday morning analysing and condensing the key changes that landlords need to be aware of. You can find the condensed summary here.
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Inside Housing broke another big story this week, with Lucie Heath revealing that the government has instructed councils to close its Everyone In accommodation as a condition of its new rough sleeping funding.
Everyone In accommodation is the hotels and other temporary accommodation facilities that were used as COVID-19 hit, and they became a huge lifeline for those living on the streets during the pandemic. In many places these hotels are still being used but the government is now putting pressure on these to be phased out, wanting to focus on more longer-term housing for those on the streets.
Homeless Link has already warned that the shutting of this type of accommodation could leave more than 1,000 people on the streets in London alone and has urged the government to extend the support for a bit longer.
In Wales, the government has now written to all social landlords asking them to provide assurances over disrepair issues across their stock. The letter was prompted by the ITV investigation into wide-scale housing issues across the country, with Clarion, Guinness and Croydon Council all coming under the spotlight.
And finally, the number of waking watches being used in blocks across London has risen to a staggering 900 buildings.
The service, which requires guards to patrol buildings and help evacuate residents in the event of a fire, is something that was borne out of the fire service’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire, when it became apparent that hundreds of buildings contained dangerous cladding and fire safety issues.
The number of waking watches being used has skyrocketed in recent years, and the London Fire Brigade has reported that they were in place on 289 blocks across the country in March 2020.
Jack Simpson, news editor
Editor’s picks: five must-read stories
- What impact will the Building Safety Bill have? The key takeaways
- Housing Ombudsman investigating five social landlords over failure to deal with complaints
- Minister says Building Safety Bill ‘cannot resolve’ leaseholder costs issue despite previous government promises
- Government tells councils to close ‘Everyone In’ hotels as a condition of rough-sleeper funding
- NHF in talks with government over allowing housing association to bid directly for decarbonisation fund
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