During a House of Commons debate on the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities, Michael Gove, agreed that the government should re-examine its stance on personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) for disabled people.
At a second reading of the bill on 7 November 2022, Gove noted that work still needed to be done on building safety overall, adding that the outstanding concern over PEEPs was a “difficult and sensitive question” to answer.
“A number of those affected by the Grenfell tragedy were individuals living with disabilities. It is critical to ensure that the correct regime is in place for those individuals so that they are safe in the homes in which they live—and they deserve to be safe—and also to ensure that were disaster to strike, the fire and rescue services would be able to ensure they could be evacuated safely,” he said.
While the government initially agreed to implement all the recommendations that emerged from the Grenfell Inquiry, it later backtracked on its PEEPs stance, noting “significant concerns over the proportionality, the practicality, and the fire safety case for PEEPs in all high-rise residential buildings”.
Unsurprisingly, the response caused much anger and worry from disability campaigners, with some believing it to be “unlawful” and “unfair”. The Leaseholder Disability Action Group, known as Claddag, has even raised funds to legally challenge the government’s decision, with a court date set for December.
When questioned about PEEPs, Gove insisted that the government have had to “undertake a significant body of work”. However, he added that it was right they should be held to account “for the speed with which we do it”. Further questions about whether plans should be implemented for disabled people living in high-rise blocks led Gove to admit: “We do need to look again at the position.”
He added: “I have to be careful because the Home Office is a separate Department and I am not the Secretary of State there, but I do know that the new Home Secretary and the new Minister responsible for fire safety appreciate and understand the need to look closely at the concerns that tenants expressed on the previous position. I have to say that the previous position was taken in good faith, but we need to pay attention to the concerns expressed.”
Gove highlighted that one of the most powerful lessons learnt from Grenfell was ensuring that social housing tenants had their voices heard and, indeed, be at “the heart of regulation and policy-making overall”. He reiterated: “Listening to what residents have said is critical to our whole approach to what happened in Grenfell, and to broader concerns about the quality of social housing and the safety of those in social housing that that tragedy underlined our need to act on.”
The debate also considered other areas of fire safety in buildings, with Gove echoing that the government was working towards ensuring that “developers who were responsible for buildings that were not safe accept the responsibility for remediating those buildings”. He added that the current “global economic headwinds” developers were facing, which could see massive impacts on both supply and their bottom line, were not an excuse to “shuffle off their responsibilities”.
Gove also pointed to landlords and freeholders “who have direct responsibility to the leaseholders in the buildings they ultimately own to remediate those buildings—that is their legal obligation”. He added that it would be unacceptable for them to try to “delay or dilute their responsibilities”, insisting that the current economic climate was also tough for the “most vulnerable in our society”.
The second reading of the bill also reiterated the need for higher professional standards in housing, as the outcomes of the Grenfell inquiry showed that “some of those who were responsible for safeguarding and improving social housing did not have the basic standards of professionalism that are required.”
Shadow Housing Secretary Lisa Nandy expressed her party’s support for the bill but insisted that the government was still very slow in putting its desired legislation into force: “We want to see the Government get on with the job. It has been five years since Grenfell, four years since the Green Paper, and three years since promises were made in the Conservative party’s election manifesto. How can it possibly be the case that we are approaching the end of 2022 and we still do not know when the measures in the Bill will come into force?”
She added that tenants should indeed be at the heart of discussions and that they should also form part of an advisory panel.