Westminster Hall

15 September 2026

Contents updated on 15 Sept 2026

The Chair opens the debate and Dr Al Pinkerton sets the Grenfell context, outlining key issues around protection of residents during works, PAS 9980 fire‑risk assessments, EWS1 problems and the position of non‑qualifying leaseholders, including case studies on delays, insurance impacts and questions on the forthcoming remediation bill and liability for historic defects.

Chamber Tue, 15 Sept 2026 House of Commons

00:10 - 00:15

Speaker 1

Order, order. Dr. Al Pinkerton to move the motion.

00:15 - 02:12

Speaker 2

I'm grateful to you, Dr. Morrison. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, and I'd like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and to all honorable and right honorable members for their participation today. More than nine years after Grenfell claimed all of those lives, we must ask whether the systems intended to protect residents and delivering the safety and security they deserve is truly working. There has been progress. The Building Safety Act, the Building Safety Regulator, and remediation funding have strengthened our collective national response.

But legislation must lead to safer homes. Funding must lead to completed works, and residents must be able to move forward with their lives. Today, I will address three interconnected issues: the protection of residents during remediation, the operation of PAS 9980 and the competence of those making critical safety decisions, and the position of non-qualifying leaseholders. And I'm going to begin by drawing on an experience directly connected to my own Surrey Heath constituency. Surrey Heath is by any definition a semi-rural constituency where you wouldn't necessarily expect this issue to have particularly reared its head.

Yet the correspondence reaching my office from Camberley, our principal market town, shows how deeply the problems that we're talking about today continue to affect ordinary households across the UK. We must judge the system by the experience of the residents who depend on it. And at Dorchester Court, one of my constituents has lived in their shared ownership home for 20 years. They're unwell, unemployed, and at risk of losing that home. They need to sell, but unresolved building safety and EWS1 issues have taken that choice away.

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