As part of Newham's Council's commitment to improving housing standards across the borough, Mayor Fiaz and her Cabinet have today approved the five-year Residential Building Safety Strategy–High-rise Buildings which will ensure that high-rise residential buildings in Newham adhere to the new Building Safety Act 2022 which came into force after the tragic Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Since the Building Safety Act 2022 came into force last April 2023, Newham Council has been working with the Building Safety Regulator to work up a plan to make sure the legislation that is intended to improve the design, construction and management of higher-risk buildings across the Borough, which has now been fully developed and some key steps have already been achieved. The Council has already registered and submitted all the key building information of all 87 high-rise residential buildings in the borough with the Building Safety Regulator ahead of the official visits from April 2024.
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Councillor Shaban Mohammed, Cabinet Member for Housing Management and Modernisation, said: "Securing approval for our very important building safety strategy to ensure our housing blocks are safe for residents today is another huge milestone in our concerted efforts to prioritise investment in our housing stock to improve the quality of life for residents and to protect our homes for future generations.
"We have already taken considerable actions to make our residential buildings safer with our first successful cladding prosecution last year and are continuing to identify high-risk buildings and removing unsafe cladding.
"We will shortly be starting to engage with our residents to ensure they understand what the new regulations might mean for them and their homes along with providing new resources to find information and log complaints."
The five-year Residential Building Safety Strategy–High-rise Buildings consists of 5 key priorities to ensure that the plan is achievable.
• Building safety to comply with our statutory obligations for occupied higher-risk buildings
• Resident engagement to meet the commitment to keeping residents safe through engagement and sharing building safety information with them
• Organisational structure to develop operational structures to deliver safe homes now and for the future
• Data and system to ensure those working on our design and building projects and on or in our higher-risk buildings are competent to do so
• Policy and strategy to ensure that buildings are managed in line with legislation, regulation, and the Council's documented safety management system for building safety.
