Reform ‘s new housing chief has sparked anger after saying “everyone dies in the end” and “fires happen” in an interview suggesting post-Grenfell safety regulations have gone too far.
Dudley, the former chair of Homes England and Reform’s new housing and infrastructure spokesperson, said that Britain’s housebuilding sector was stifled by “over-regulation” in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people and displaced dozens of others in 2017.
In an interview with Inside Housing, shared with The i Paper, he said: “Extracting Grenfell from the statistics, actually, people dying in house fires is rare…many, many more people die on the roads driving cars, but we’re not making cars illegal, so why are we stopping houses being built?”
He added: “People may feel that we’ve done the right thing through introducing this regulation, but on the other side of that, think about all the human suffering of not having a home, not being able to have children, and being stuck in your parents’ home in your childhood bedroom. So there is a balance.
“You know…sadly…everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right? You can’t stop tragic things from happening.” He added: “Fires do happen.”
The Grenfell Tower fire was found to have been an avoidable and preventable disaster whereby regulatory failings created a death trap. The subsequent inquiry also revealed that safety concerns about blocks of flats were regularly ignored by politicians at a local and national level in the run-up to the fire.
“Grenfell was a reaction to a tragedy,” Dudley said, “but the impact that it has had is to stop house building of any tall buildings, generally in London and the whole of the country.”
The Grenfell Tower fire was found to have been an avoidable and preventable disaster whereby regulatory failings created a death trap. (Pic: Natalie Oxford/PA Wire)Kimia Zabihyan, advocate for Grenfell Next of Kin – a large group of immediate families of those who lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire – said Dudley’s comments revealed a “moral vacuum” and suggested that “preserving human life is optional in the race to build faster”.
“Framing housing as a choice between building homes and safety creates a false dilemma — unless the goal is to solve the housing crisis by lowering life expectancy?” Zabihyan said.
“Dudley has made Reform’s position crystal clear: safety is inconvenient, regulation is a nuisance, and death is just one of those things. His idea of ‘balance’ is relaxed… as long as it’s not his family on the wrong side of it. Nothing says leadership like shrugging at preventable deaths.”
When Dudley was approached by The i Paper and asked to clarify his remarks, a Reform UK spokesperson said: “Homes must, of course, be built safely. However, overly burdensome building safety regulations can stifle housebuilding, meaning targets are missed, and the waiting list for homes grows longer at a time when we need more.
“Simon’s comments on Grenfell reflected his broader point that the regulatory pendulum has swung too far in response to the tragedy. As he explained, there is a fine balance between overregulation – which can slow the delivery of new homes – and ensuring that more homes are built safely without too much red tape.”
Interview transcript
Inside Housing:
“Obviously, all the parties want more building and more house building. But how do you balance that? Because…Grenfell exposed under regulation of [the housebuilding sector]…?
Simon Dudley:
“The practical impact of overregulation is to stop things. Now, people may feel that we’ve done the right thing through introducing this regulation, but on the other side of that, think about all the human suffering of not having a home, not being able to have children, and being stuck in your parents’ home in your childhood bedroom. So there is a balance. You know, we can’t, you know, sadly, you know, everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right? You can’t stop tragic things from happening. You can try to minimise excesses, but bad things do happen. Fires do happen. So, where is the right point to draw the line in terms of regulation to stop something like that? Grenfell was a reaction to a tragedy, but the impact it has had is to stop housebuilding of any tall buildings, generally in London and the whole of the country. It stopped it.”
Simon Dudley:
“You’ve got an incompetent regulator that’s not doing its job, not doing what Michael Gove wanted to do when he was dealing with that issue, when Theresa May set up the regulator with the best of intentions….They’re decent people, but the impact of poor regulation is to stop house building in one of the world’s capitals. So, the pendulum has just swung too far the wrong way. And frankly, for people who are the architects of things, it’s very difficult for them to put them right. Reform is not the architect of so many of these failures which our country has now. We will put it right, because we’re not emotionally connected with them. They’re not things that we created. We will fix them.”
Inside Housing:
“So would you get rid of [the Building Safety Regulator] completely? Then?”
Simon Dudley:
“You know, there’s going to be a spectrum of options. Is it capable of being fixed? So it can mean that buildings can proceed and capital can be deployed into a sector in a fast way, or is it so rotten that it needs to be changed fundamentally? It may just be constituted in the wrong way. All of the legal…powers that it has are just…it’s been set up in the wrong way, and then it’s morphed into something which is stopping building, you know, we have to build homes.”
The Building Safety Act (2022) is a landmark piece of legislation introduced by former Tory Housing Secretary Michael Gove to prevent future disasters and address the safety problems highlighted by Grenfell.
It created the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), which now oversees all high-rise residential construction in blocks of 18 metres or more in height.
However, the BSR has suffered delays, which resulted in a backlog of buildings to be approved, particularly in London. Critics said the regulator was not properly resourced.
Since taking office, Labour has taken the BSR away from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and turned it into an arm’s length government department. The backlog has nearly been cleared.
Government set to miss it housebuilding target
However, the Government has set a target to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029 but is currently on course to miss that by around 300,000 homes.
According to housebuilders, the real barriers to building are the rising costs of labour and materials, as well as a lack of what’s known as “effective demand,” which means buyers who can get mortgages and buy homes. Planning regulations are also a common bugbear for developers. The Government has tried to address this in its new Planning and Infrastructure Act.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spokesperson said: “The Grenfell Tower fire was a wholly avoidable tragedy. The regulations brought in after the disaster are in place to make sure that something so terrible doesn’t happen again.”
“We will not apologise for taking tough action to save lives and protect people from unsafe buildings.”
Analysis by Vicky Spratt, Housing and Society Correspondent
Red tape! Oh, how politicians love to hate it. But when it comes to building safety, there’s no playing politics with regulation.
What I saw on the night of 14 June, 2017, is burned into my memory: a 24-storey tower block with around 350 people inside, engulfed in flames that the fire brigade struggled to put out.
In the weeks and months that followed, the charred structure of Grenfell loomed large on London’s skyline as photographs of the 72 people who died filled the news.
The Grenfell Inquiry concluded that the fire was an avoidable tragedy which resulted in systemic failure by government and the housebuilding industry who had repeatedly failed to prioritise safety despite warnings.
Indeed, one warning which was never heeded was the Lakanal House fire in south London, which killed six people and injured 20 in 2009.
The Inquiry even specifically singled out the “war on red tape” declared by David Cameron’s government in the early 2010s as creating an environment where safety was not taken seriously.
Since then, I have interviewed former Tory Housing Ministers whose eyes have filled with tears while they recounted the fire. And, I have sat before bereaved people who will never see their mothers, sisters, brothers or fathers ever again.
There can be no doubt that Britain has a housing crisis. Nor are we building enough new housing at the pace required to solve that crisis or boost our ailing economy.
However, at the same time, while builders and politicians of all stripes – including the current Labour Government – have noted that the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) tasked with enforcing new post-Grenfell regulations has been too slow, everybody agrees on one thing: building safety regulation is necessary.
It is wrong to conflate regulation with poor resourcing and enforcement or suggest that building fires ought, in any way whatsoever, a fact of life in our modern world.
We must build high-rise homes. Yes. But they must be safe, quality homes that people can sleep easily in.
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