Starmer elevated the chairman of a hated regulator to the Lords on the same day that the Lords published a scathing report into said regulator’s numerous failings. Failing upwards is what British politics does…
Andy Roe – former Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade – was made chairman of the Building Safety Regulator in June this year. He will now sit as a Labour peer…
A report by the cross-party Lords Industry and Regulators Committee was released on Wednesday. Among other things it identified:
The conclusion: “We heard consistent and repeated complaints that the BSR could take more than nine months to make decisions on whether construction projects should be allowed to go ahead, significantly longer than the statutory target of twelve weeks for these decisions. In many cases, this has delayed or disincentivised refurbishments, safety upgrades and the remediation of dangerous cladding in high-rise buildings, leaving residents in unsafe buildings for longer and increasing costs for leaseholders.” Anyone who has come near this regulator hates it more than their mother-in-law…
The report follows a similar investigation by the YIMBY Initiative. Now its chairman gets a peerage…
Sarah Pochin at Reform Scotland’s manifesto launch event: “I really wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burka, but apparently I wasn’t allowed… One day let’s do one of these events not live-streamed. We’ll do all the naughty stuff…”