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The Building Safety Bill is currently being debated in parliament and the witnesses are giving their points of view eloquently… but is something missing?
If you have to give evidence as a witness in a court of law you are asked to swear, to make an oath, that the evidence you are giving is truthful.
Canter through the recent witness statements given to the Parliamentary committee for the Building Safety Bill however, and the evidence being given is often just statements. Many are just opinions from the perspective of a self-interest group. All appear to be unopposed and taken as fact.
You are always going to expect a fire brigade union to ask for more staff and for local government to ask for more money but the delivery of this evidence at the Building Safety Bill hearings is not just a plea for more resources, it’s pointing fingers, shifting the blame in many cases onto people who are not being asked for their viewpoint.
Take for instance The National Secretary of the Fire Brigade Union who said “We have from day one opposed the privatisation of local authority building control. If you listen to the evidence from Grenfell, there have been unprecedented cuts in local authority building control teams.”
Hang on. You don’t want private sector building control because … it’s meant the public sector now can’t do their job properly? Run that past me again.
Now read this and weep:
“We have long maintained that there should not be competition in building control. In case members of the Committee are not aware, anyone who procures building work can choose who regulates them through the building control process. It could be a local authority building control team or a private sector approved inspector. As far as we are aware, that is the only regulatory function where you can actually choose who regulates you. It is a bit like marking your own homework at school. That means local authorities have to compete against the approved inspectors in respect of their big project. Those approved inspectors submit quotations of how much they think it will cost them to deliver that building control service. It goes without saying that anyone procuring building work will look to go with the lowest cost provider of that building control service.” Martin Taylor, the executive director at Local Authority Building Control.
This is LABC throwing mud again. Throw enough and it sticks.
The full debate is here
Do Building Control staff in Local Authorities support this view? A lot of you have worked for Approved Inspectors… were you a bad employee. Did you approve rubbish? Martin Taylor thinks so. You elected him to speak on your behalf.
Read the statement again and ask yourself whether 80+ Approved Inspector companies are running around doing dodgy deals and letting clients build dangerous shoddy buildings.
LABC want to get rid of the private sector entirely. That is their aim. The Building Safety Bill is the thin end of the wedge. They want the whole pie. No competition. All work. See the previous Blog 2 for why.
But all of this needs to be set out to MPs and nobody from the private sector has been invited to give evidence.
Just like there’s no private sector voice at the CABE conference next week.
If you are attending ask them why not? Doesn’t matter if you’re in the public or private sector. Just ask – be polite.
I asked on LinkedIn and was told CICAIR would be there and that they represented the AIs. Yes, seriously.
Maybe CABE should be reminded who their membership consists of….
Go on – be a devil. Post a question and ask them!
You only have your livelihood to lose.
If you want to be passive and find out what is being said about your profession I urge you to visit https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ and enter Building Safety Bill as an alert. You’ll get an email every time theres a debate and you can see it all first hand.
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The Secret Building Inspector 
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