Housing minister Alex Norris, who was grilled on the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, said safety is ‘in contest with’ Labour’s target to build more homes
A housing minister has promised building safety standards will not be compromised by Labour’s ambitious target to build 1.5 million new homes.
Alex Norris, who was grilled on the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, said we cannot have the “same conversation about remediation” of dangerous buildings years down the line. He said safety is not seen as a “trade off” to or “in contest with” achieving the target.
Mr Norris also warned that regulatory stages for developers should feel like “hurdles”. Speaking to MPs on the housing committee, he said: “We have a significant target – 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. The Prime Minister’s been clear, the Deputy Prime Minister’s been clear, we’re very clear as a department, that is not in contest with building safety, that is not seen as a trade off, that’s not seen as a negotiation or a bargain. We have to have a safe regime.”
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The building safety minister continued: “It is right sometimes – it is right always – that the process of going through BSR [Building Safety Regulator] for those applications feels like those are hurdles to clear. Those are hurdles to clear. Those are hurdles for constructors, for owners, to say this building we’re building is safe and in 15 years our successors aren’t sitting here having the same conversation about remediation. I would defend that principle really strongly.”
It follows strong words from Keir Starmer on cutting regulation, with the PM earlier this year(2025) saying Britain needed to “clear out the regulatory weeds” that are burdensome to businesses. Asked about the Grenfell tragedy in the wake of plans to slash regulation, Rachel Reeves said in January: “Of course we’ve got to get the balance right on regulation but we’ve made commitments to the families that have suffered because of what happened at Grenfell and we will not renege on those commitments.”
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The Phase 2 report into the Grenfell Tower fire, which was published in September, found a push by David Cameron’s government to tear up red tape “dominated” thinking across departments. It concluded that officials were under “pressure because of the policy of deregulation”, including those working in the Communities department, which oversaw building regulations.
Meanwhile a report by the Public Accounts Committee last month said efforts to accelerate remediation plans to fix buildings with dangerous cladding are at risk of not being met due to dwindling numbers of suitably qualified fire risk assessors or trained cladders to carry out the work. It said such pressures are “likely to be exacerbated” by the Government’s target to build 1.5million homes.
Elsewhere in the committee session, Mr Norris confirmed Dame Judith Hackitt, who previously led an independent review into building regulations in the wake of the Grenfell fire, will chair a new panel looking at building control. He said: “One of the very important recommendations in the inquiry was the establishment of a panel to assess and to bring forward ideas on building control. So that we’re setting up very, very soon indeed.”
The Grenfell final report had recommended the government should appoint an “independent panel to consider whether it is in the public interest for building control functions to be performed by those who have a commercial interest in the process”. Mr Norris said Dame Judith’s appointment was expected to be announced officially in the coming days.
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