Kirklees Together

On Tuesday 9 September, Cabinet approved a report detailing proposed new building safety policies for Homes and Neighbourhood properties.

The five new building safety policies outlined in the report, focus predominantly on higher-risk residential buildings and will help us continue to keep tenants safe while meeting our regulatory duties and responsibilities as social landlord.

Now approved, the new policies, set out how we will manage safety concerns within high-risk buildings covering fire and structural safety, inspection and maintenance of lifts, and the reporting of serious incidents. These new policies support or replace a number of policies and processes already in place, making it clearer and easier for staff, tenants, and residents to understand how the council manages building safety. Fire safety is a priority for Homes and Neighbourhoods, and these policies are another step in that improvement journey.

Now the building safety policies are approved, a Building Safety Engagement Strategy will be developed in collaboration with tenants and frontline staff to support effective implementation of the policies. This will make sure that all tenants area aware of building safety arrangements and can raise any concerns.

Councillor Philip James, Cabinet Member for Housing and Physical Communities, said:

“The safety and quality of our council homes is of the utmost importance to us, and there are already a number of policies and processes in place to support this.

“In addition to our working towards completing our fire safety programme, National regulations are constantly being updated and we need to make sure our policies reflect these changes.

“These new building safety policies will support consistency across Homes and Neighbourhoods policies, improving building safety processes and ensuring our compliance with building safety legislation. When put into practice very little will change day-to-day for tenants, however they will keep everyone safer. ”