Peer Demands Timeline For Post-Grenfell Safety Works

A Conservative former Cabinet minister has said he could try to change the government’s flagship leasehold bill in an effort to improve reporting for buildings that need safety work completing in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Lord George Young of Cookham, who served as a Chief Whip under David Cameron in the Commons, and was also a whip in the House of Lords, expressed frustration that seven years after the 2017 Grenfell tower tragedy, in which 72 people were killed, many blocks are still awaiting work to improve safety. The incident prompted an overhaul of building safety across the country, much of which could be retrospectively applied to existing towerblocks over a certain height. 

Lord Young's intervention comes ahead of the second phase of the inquiry into the fire. The inquiry began in 2020, and it is expected that it will finally be reported on at some point this summer, although it has now been confirmed that this won't be before the seventh anniversary of the fire on 14 June as many families had hoped. Publication of the second phase of the inquiry’s report is likely to push the issue of building safety back up the political agenda ahead of the general election. 

He has now challenged the government to have “a firm date by which all the necessary remediation post-Grenfell will have been done” as well as produce “progress reports”. 

While the government does produce a number of statistics on building remediation, Lord Young was critical that much of it was “pretty vague”, outlining either a "pathway towards remediation" stating that plans have been submitted. 

"That doesn't really give you any idea of the progress,” he told PoliticsHome. 

Instead he would like to see a detailed "roadmap" outlining how buildings