CIOB responds to Newsnight's report: ‘Trapped: the UK’s Building Safety Crisis'

Last night’s Newsnight programme [2-9-2021], ‘Trapped: the UK’s Building Safety Crisis’, highlighted the human consequences of the failures of quality and building safety that have blighted our industry. For those living in high-rise residential buildings with unsafe cladding, the reforms proposed by the Government’s Building Safety Bill, currently passing through Parliament, will come too late - but for our industry they cannot come soon enough.
 
The Building Safety Bill seeks to address some of the failings identified by Dame Judith Hackitt DBE’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, published in 2018 in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, by providing increased regulatory oversight, enforcement and greater clarity of roles and responsibilities.
 
It is also clear that our industry needs to learn the lessons of the past and change the culture of indifference that helped create the ‘race to the bottom’, which is the cause of so many of the quality failures that we are seeing, not just in residential buildings.
 
Our industry is responsible for creating the places that people need to live, work, learn and play in, which why getting this right is so important.
 
CIOB is actively working with Government and industry to raise standards of competency and promote best practice in quality and building safety. But for real change to happen collaboration is needed right across the sector - that needs to involve those who own, manage, fund and insure buildings as well, a point underlined by last night’s programme. CIOB will continue to work with parliamentarians to provide insight into how the Bill can be improved to create the real change that our industry needs.