Hope that Welsh building safety victims will get the same protection as English victims

Martin Shipton

Building safety campaigners in Wales are hopeful that proposed amendments to a Bill currently going through the Senedd will give them the same rights as their counterparts in England.

South Wales Central Independent MS Rhys ab Owen has made a video in which he states: “It’s now eight and a half years since the Grenfell disaster, where 72 people lost their lives. To this day, countless people in Wales are still stuck in unsafe buildings. The pressure on their mental health and their wellbeing is huge. The costs are crippling, family life frozen. People trapped in their homes.

“For years I’ve been working with victims, including the incredible Welsh Cladiators group. We’re reaching an important milestone. We’ve reached the second stage of the Building Safety Bill. You might wonder why this is important. Earlier, before Christmas, I managed to argue, despite the Welsh Government saying otherwise, that remediation should be in scope in this Bill. Now I’ve managed, because of that, to table amendments which put remediation at the heart of this Bill. I’m proposing amendments that require landlords to remedy specific defects by a fixed deadline, and also require developers to make payments to meet the cost incurred of the defect.

“If you think it’s time for victims in Wales to have the same legal rights as victims in England, please get in touch and please support the incredible work of the Welsh Cladiators.”

Mr Owen told the Senedd last month during a debate on the first stage of the Bill: “One of the key findings of the engagement with residents was concern about the financial burden being passed on to residents. Cabinet Secretary, can we not learn from the leaseholder contribution cap that they have in England? Will you work with me and the brilliant Welsh Cladiators to add provisions into this Bill that are similar to sections 116 and 125 of the Building Safety Act 2022 in England?

“English victims should not be enjoying better protection than Welsh victims. The Senedd housing committee has recently echoed the long-standing concerns of Welsh victims, about the lack of hard timescales and sanctions being placed on developers that are failing to remediate at pace.

“While I will support the general principles today, I am deeply concerned that we are on a journey to create legislation that, first, is over-reliant on regulation and an unnecessarily complex infrastructure that will be severely under-resourced and funded; secondly, has requirements that will be extremely hard to achieve; and, finally, doesn’t fully deliver what building safety victims have been calling for for nearly nine years.”

Hopeful

He is now hopeful that if the amendments are included in the Bill, the situation for building safety victims in Wales will be improved.

A spokesperson for the Welsh Cladiators said: “We have just a few weeks to try and do this with the current Senedd term ending soon.

“Thousands of innocent victims in Cardiff and Swansea and elsewhere in Wales would benefit massively from these amendments. They were previously rejected by Welsh Labour a few years ago.

“We believe this is a critical point in our eight years long fight for justice as the current Welsh remediation programme is in disarray. The amendments potentially offer some relief.”