Urgent action is needed to ensure the safety of residents in high rise apartments, a committee of MPs has demanded.
And the Housing, Communities and Local Government has called for an expansion to the proposed ban on combustible cladding as well as ordering the government to tackle conflicts of interests in the building industry.
A report from the MPs says that Whitehall’s plan to ban the use of materials which are not of limited combustibility in new high rise buildings must also apply to existing buildings.
And it also says that, where feasible, sprinklers should be fitted to all high rise apartments to provide an extra layer of safety.
The government should make funding available to councils and housing associations to cover the cost of installing sprinklers, the MPs report.
They called on ministers to offer a low interest loan scheme to private owners of residential rises, and insisted the costs should not be passed onto leaseholders.
And the committee also said that more needed to be done in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire “before more lives are lost”.
But the MPs levelled their biggest criticism at the construction industry and “conflicts of interest” within it, such as Fire Rescue Authorities inspecting the work of their own commercial trading arms and buildings appointing their own inspectors.
“We are now more than a year on from the catastrophic events at Grenfell Tower, yet despite an Independent Review of building regulations, we are still no closer to having a system that inspires confidence that residents can be safe and secure in their homes,” said Committee chairman Clive Betts.
