MSPs have voted to pass a Bill aimed at reducing the risk of Grenfell-style fires caused by cladding on buildings.
The Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill was passed unanimously by 116 MSPs on Tuesday.
The Scottish Government set up a cladding remediation programme following the London fire which killed 72 people in 2017 – given that the material on the building is believed to have contributed to the spread of the blaze.
Some fire-safety experts also said the plastic cladding could have burned as quickly as petrol.
The Bill will make the delivery of the scheme easier, by giving ministers power to assess and carry out remediation on buildings with unsafe cladding – with any remediation work then recorded in a special register.
It's currently understood that around 105 buildings in Scotland have the plastic cladding, while a Holyrood report in February this year said of those buildings on the cladding remediation programme, one has had remediation work and one has had mitigation work.
Ministers have been criticised for the scheme’s slow progress, whereas England has – as of the end of last year – started or finished work on 42% of the 1,608 properties found to have cladding on the facade.
Speaking in the debate on Tuesday, housing minister Paul McLennan said it was his “strong belief” that the Bill lays the “foundations needed to drive forward our remediation programme at pace”.
He added that the Bill was “one part of the process”.
“We know we’ve got lots to do in terms of the remediation programme,” he told MSPs.
“I’ve talked about the Bill enabling faster delivery of the cladding remediation programme, addressing barriers experienced to date, allowing us to deliver that step change in pace that is required to best serve those homeowners and residents potentially effected by unsafe cladding.”
READ MORE: Firefighters anger over ScotGov failure in post-Grenfell safety crisis
Miles Briggs, the Scottish Tory housing spokesman, praised the “consensual” nature of the minister’s engagement in the passage of the Bill.
Mr Briggs went on to describe a meeting with residents of a cladded building in Edinburgh, where they described their situation as a “living hell”.
“The stress which residents have faced and the information vacuum which they have had to live in has been unacceptable, especially when you consider that these are our constituents living in properties that have been labelled as potentially containing cladding which poses a threat to life.”
Residents, he said, “wanted a solution and they want it as soon as possible”, adding that people in such buildings have “put their lives on hold” until they find out more about the potential dangers of the cladding.
Scottish Labour housing spokesman, Mark Griffin, also praised the minister’s approach, but was critical of the use of a framework Bill, which leaves details to be decided through regulations devised by ministers.
“This seems to be symptomatic of the Government’s approach across many Bills that we’ve seen, particularly in this session of Parliament, which seems to give Parliament the bare bones of a law to agree on in principle and then to promise to deliver the detail at some later point,” he said.
The use of such Bills, which have also been used for policies including the National Care Service, “stifles proper consideration of policy and can’t replace debate on the detail of proposals”.
Mr Griffin added that the Bill was a “welcome and overdue step” to increase safety in the impacted properties, but added: “Much still needs to be done, it needs to be done at pace to make sure that Scotland catches up with the rest of the UK in removing combustible cladding from people’s homes.”
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