Building safety could be jeopardised if \u201creckless\u201d plans to scrap EU-era regulations go ahead, the government has been warned.<\/p>\n
Legislation is now going through parliament that will see thousands of laws dating from the UK\u2019s membership of the EU automatically expire after December, unless they are specifically kept or replaced.<\/p>\n
Concerns have been raised that key pieces of safety legislation such as the recently implemented Building Safety Act will be undermined if the regulations on which they are based no longer exist.<\/p>\n
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Sarah Ludford warned of \u201cperverse and damaging\u201d consequences if the EU regulations were stripped away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unexpected consequences of kicking out the EU undergirding of UK law could be very perverse and damaging, with what is left lacking legal coherence,\u201d she said in the second-reading debate for the Retained EU Law Bill in the House of Lords.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the field of construction, the Building Safety Act 2022 is premised on definitions in a set of 2015 regulations \u2013 the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations \u2013 implementing an EU directive and creating a framework for health and safety in construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless these regulations are kept switched on, the 2022 Act of Parliament will have its underpinning yanked away. What then exists?\u201d<\/p>\n
The wide-ranging Building Safety Act was introduced in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and includes provisions such as the creation of the Building Safety Regulator and the Construction Products Regulator. It also gives the government powers to restrict the business activities of companies that refuse to remediate building defects.<\/p>\n
Describing the bill as \u201cextremely unwise, ill-considered and reckless\u201d, she said it would create widespread legal confusion as no one knew the exact number of provisions affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government has no idea of how many instruments the bill will affect; there is indeed no guarantee that all retained law subject to its provisions will be identified,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In response, Lord Martin Callanan, now a junior minister at the newly created Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, said the government was \u201ccommitted to maintaining comprehensive safety standards\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can confirm that the government will not, of course, weaken building safety standards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The method of letting the EU-era laws expire, known as a \u201csunset\u201d, is the quickest and most effective way to accelerate the review of the majority of such laws, he said, and a major cross-government programme was already underway to identify retained EU law that could be reformed, repealed or replaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the sunset as a default for retained EU law, we risk unsuitable or obsolete EU laws still being on our statute book in 10, 15 or even 20 years\u2019 time, which should not be acceptable to anyone in this house,\u201d said Lord Callanan.<\/p>\n
Bill Dunkerley, a lawyer at Pannone Corporate, told Construction News <\/em>that the bill in its current form risked sunsetting overnight EU-derived health and safety legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this happens, it will represent a fundamental \u2013 not to mention physically dangerous \u2013 shift in workplace compliance,\u201d he said. \u201cAlthough the Building Safety Act is not a piece of retained EU legislation and will not itself disappear were the bill to come into force, it is premised on definitions contained within the Construction, Design and Management Regulations, which are retained legislation, as are the Building Regulations themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt cannot have been parliament\u2019s intention when introducing the bill to undermine or neuter existing and future legislation, especially a statute of such wide-ranging importance as the Building Safety Act.”<\/p>\n