2 Historical institutionalism and the social-housing resident

Historical institutionalism is one of three new institutionalisms (alongside rational choice and sociological institutionalisms) recognised as emerging from the previous behavioural perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s (Hall and Taylor, Reference Hall and Taylor1996). Although there are overlaps, each ‘paint[s] quite different pictures of the political world’ (ibid., p. 936) and has different methodological assumptions and different relations between structure and agency (Hay and Wincott, Reference Hay and Wincott1998). Historical institutionalism ‘is a research tradition that examines how temporal processes and events influence the origin and transformation of institutions that govern political and economic relations’ (Fioretos et al., Reference Fioretos, Falleti, Sheingate, Fioretos, Falleti and Sheingate2016, p. 1). It has particular concerns with the maintenance and adaptation of institutions (Sanders, Reference Sanders, Rhodes, Binder and Rockman2006, p. 42). Importantly for our purpose, the notion of an institution is defined broadly as ‘formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions embedded in the organization structure of the polity or political economy’ (Hall and Taylor, Reference Hall and Taylor1996, p. 938; see also March and Olsen, Reference March, Olsen, Rhodes, Binder and Rockman2006, p. 3); or, as Streeck and Thelen (Reference Streeck, Thelen, Streeck and Thelen2005, p. 9) put it, institutions are ‘building blocks of social order … organizing behaviour into predictable and reliable patterns’. While the focus of historical institutionalism is commonly structures and ideas, Guy Peters et al. (Reference Guy Peters, Pierre and King2005) demonstrate the significance of politics and dissensus between political parties in plotting ways forward. And, as Hay and Wincott (Reference Hay and Wincott1998, p. 954) suggest, there is room for agency:

One of the tenets of historical institutionalism is, by way of reflection on the past, that institutions are self-reinforcing and, in short, path-dependent (Pierson, Reference Pierson2000). In so doing, they shape our ideas and create boundaries around the possible range of interventions. They produce taken-for-granted assumptions about the social world. There are lengthy periods of stability enabling institutions to reproduce themselves over time. These periods are said to give way to change during turbulent formative moments, commonly referred to as ‘critical junctures’, or ‘punctuated equilibria’ (Guy Peters et al., Reference Guy Peters, Pierre and King2005, p. 1289), although it is also important that such junctures can be incremental (ibid.). During these junctures, the policy window opens and the range of possible solutions broadens, albeit that range is ‘defined by prior conditions, even though within the limits of those conditions, actors have real choices’ (Capoccia, Reference Capoccia, Fioretos, Falleti and Sheingate2016, p. 92). While a critical juncture may appear to be a single event that produces a crisis, most usually these single events reflect longer-term processes of change unfolding by and large incrementally (Streeck and Thelen, Reference Streeck, Thelen, Streeck and Thelen2005). This insight suggests that pre-crisis shifts constrain post-crisis change (Fioretos et al., Reference Fioretos, Falleti, Sheingate, Fioretos, Falleti and Sheingate2016, p. 14) and a failure to recognise this produces a Conservative bias (‘the widespread propensity to explain what might seem to be new as just another version of the old’: Streeck and Thelen, Reference Streeck, Thelen, Streeck and Thelen2005, p. 3).

Nevertheless, institutions are not static – they are dynamically and situationally in action. Policy can and does change, but the levels at which change occurs is different. In classic terms, Hall (Reference Hall1983) suggested that changes to the paradigm policy framework (of ideas and standards, instrumentation and problematisation) can occur at three levels. First-order change was characterised as incremental, second-order change as moving one step further in terms of strategic action, but both involve continuities of policy-making; they are ‘normal policymaking’ and ‘normal science’ (Hall, Reference Hall1983, p. 279). Third-order change is paradigm change involving discontinuities. In essence, our paper considers the extent to which that third-order change has occurred as a result of the fire.

Historical institutionalism has not made an impact in socio-legal studies (cf. McEvoy, Reference McEvoy2011, pp. 355–356), although there have been incursions in housing studies (Lowe, Reference Lowe2004; Bengtsson, Reference Bengtsson2015; and, most recently, Crook and Kemp, Reference Crook and Kemp2019); but it has considerable potential for understanding socio-legal processes of change and stasis in institutions. If we take (say) Lowe's perhaps idiosyncratic historical institutionalist study of tenure restructuring during the late Victorian period through to the end of the twentieth century, which explains the residualisation of public housing and the growth of owner-occupation, we can add that certain liberalising legislative interventions catapulted owner-occupation to prominence – most particularly the role of the Law of Property Act 1925 as producing simplification devices as well as liberalising the mortgage market; th|e Housing Act 1980 in creating the right to buy; and the deregulating Building Societies Act 1986 – while, at the same time, demonstrating the significance of building societies in these processes (see e.g. Boddy, Reference Boddy1980; Reference Boddy1989).

The hegemony of the idea of ‘home ownership’ has been much discussed in housing and socio-legal studies, with both disciplines stressing its discursive power (see e.g. Gurney, Reference Gurney1999; Carr, Reference Carr2011; Fox, Reference Fox2006). Indeed, it is easy to characterise UK housing-policy shifts since the coalition government as verging on the mono-tenurial, such has been the importance accorded to home ownership. This would be too simplistic however. The increasing unaffordability of owner-occupation, which accelerated following the global financial crash, has provoked a series of government initiatives that to an extent have re-regulated the private rented sector – although rents remain tied to the market (Carr and Alcock, Reference Carr, Alcock, Arvind and Steele2020). And, despite the fixation on home ownership, the (social) construction of social housing has shifted since the 1970s at the level of policy and ideas (see e.g. Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Kemeny and Manzi2003). The Thatcher–Major governments (1980–1997) produced a paradigmatic shift from mass housing towards a residual model of provision (Harloe, Reference Harloe1995). The right to buy stimulated one of the most significant tenure shifts towards home ownership. Equally significantly, there has been a gradual shift towards regarding social housing as ‘ambulance housing’ (Fitzpatrick and Pawson, Reference Fitzpatrick and Pawson2014; Fitzpatrick and Watts, Reference Fitzpatrick and Watts2017) – that is, a time-limited tenure for some of the most vulnerable – and discursively constructing it as problem housing – through strategies to deal with issues such as antisocial behaviour, which emphasise the otherness of social-housing occupiers (Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Kemeny and Manzi2003). Simultaneously, the large-scale financialisation of social housing, together with the use of private-sector management techniques and large-scale outsourcing, has produced an ‘accountability vacuum’ in which residents’ safety has taken second place to other values (Hodkinson, Reference Hodkinson2019).

One consequence of shifts in ideas about social housing has been an incremental development in ways of thinking about residents. There has been an uneven shift in that thinking which is based on rather different understandings of the motivation of tenants – drawing on the terms used by Le Grand (Reference Le Grand1997): on the one hand, residents can be seen as ‘knaves’ or ‘knights’ (either as rational, self-interested or public-spirited altruists) or, on the other hand, as ‘pawns’ (passive recipients of landlord bounty). These shifting constructions have been in action for the past forty years. Their construction as ‘passive recipients of landlord bounty’ (Gilroy, Reference Gilroy and Cowan1998) became problematic in contrast to the active and responsible players required by the market – the homeowner and the private renter. In response to that perceived passivity and irresponsibility, social tenants were reconstituted as consumers, customers and/or citizens, with assumptions of voice, whose benchmarks were assumed by policy-makers to be the equivalent of private renters or owners (Carr and Cowan, Reference Carr and Cowan2015; Cairncross et al., Reference Cairncross, Clapham and Goodlad1997, pp. 104–107). This process, as yet, is patchy and incomplete, as the way in which the Grenfell residents were treated both before and after the fire demonstrates.

These ways of thinking about tenure and tenants are, for our purposes, institutions in their own right in housing policy. They organise ways of thinking about the housing settlement. They cannot be conceived separately – although sometimes they are by policy-makers (particularly when one thinks about the Cameron governments’ monotenurial housing policy) – because they interact in dynamic ways. It is best to think of them as part of the matrix, or ratio, through which housing policy is produced. So, for example, the shift in thinking about council tenants in the 1970s as perhaps knavish consumers led inexorably to their right to buy their home – shifts that we turn to examine in more detail in the next section.

3 The social-housing resident as an institution

There are two ways in which the concerns of residents of social housing have been given institutional substance. The first is through legal rights, the second through resident voice.

4 A critical juncture? Three illustrations

May's foreword to the social-housing Green Paper might have suggested that the fire at Grenfell Tower would mark a sea change in the recognition that government was to accord the ignored and stigmatised citizens who lived in social housing. In a written statement to the House of Commons on 22 June 2017, May said:

Although scholars have noted that emotional responses can characterise policy-making in highly charged environments (Cox and Beland, Reference Cox and Beland2013, p. 314), our argument is that the menu of options for reform has remained limited. There will be change, but this kind of change is no more than, at best, second-order change – that is, an adjustment of policy within a normal frame, ‘without challenging the overall terms of a given policy paradigm, much like “normal science”’ (Hall, Reference Hall1983, p. 279). And the current policy paradigm, and the privileges it accords to the market, is problematic. It fails to acknowledge the ways in which the right to buy has fractured the social-housing estate. It continues to see the resident of social housing as a council tenant (and therefore holder of a second-rate tenure) and it privileges individualist over collectivist responses, emphasising the private law binary relationship between resident as consumer, able to exercise legally mandated rights, and their immediately superior landlord.

These claims are illustrated in the three examples of policy-making that we now consider: reform focused on conditions of rented properties; the social-housing White Paper; and building regulation and building-safety reforms. These are ongoing processes, and we acknowledge that our analysis is rooted in a particular moment (conceding that there may be the paradigmatic change that is suggested by the notion of a critical juncture at some later point). Nevertheless, at the time of writing, what appears to characterise policy-making in the aftermath of the fire at Grenfell is its limited range.

5 Focusing on conditions

On 16 October 2015, Karen Buck, an opposition Labour MP, addressed the House of Commons to open the second-reading debate on her private member's bill, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill. She noted that since 1885, parliament had required that certain rented properties be fit for human habitation (Hansard, col. 614 (16 October 2015)). The latest iteration of that rule was contained in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, but was unavailable in practice for nearly all properties by the rent requirements; the implied term only applied to tenancies where the annual rent paid was less than £80 in London, or £52 in the rest of the country. Even by the time of the 1985 Act, these figures were low (not having been updated since 1957); but, by 2015, they were ludicrous.

Few MPs participated in the debate, although Conservative MP Philip Davies spoke at length, arguing that it would cause a lot of grief for private landlords (Hansard, col. 625 (16 October 2015)). Effectively filibustered and without government support, the Bill did not get any further and attempts to revive it via a proposed amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill were blocked in January 2016.

In July 2017, in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, Buck was again selected to bring forward a private member's bill. This time, her bill received cross-party support and won government backing. Grenfell Tower loomed large in the debates, with many MPs referring to it in their contributions, including – for example – Conservative MP Will Quince, who argued that

This is a clear example of the policy window opening. Where the proposal to mandate basic standards had previously been ignored or actively resisted by government, the fire meant that it was suddenly in favour. It is also an example of path dependency determining policy outcomes. While not seeking to diminish the campaigning that led to it being enacted, it was not a new radical reimagination; it was something that was ‘on the table’, around which parliament could coalesce to demonstrate action, falling squarely into the contemporary understanding of the social-housing resident and the pre-existing paradigm of enforceable private rights.

As it is based on a private, contractual relationship between tenant and landlord, whether social tenant or not, it is an individualised right by way of an implied term familiar in consumer rights. One limitation is that its effective operation requires a proactive tenant bringing potentially evidentially complex legal proceedings, despite limited availability of legal aid. Those who are particularly marginalised will find it hardest to uphold such rights in practice. As Carr and Alcock argued in relation to the reregulation of the private rented sector, it is an understanding of consumerism that emphasises the responsibilities of the tenant and their relationship with the landlord:

In addition, the problem must lie within the purview of that private relationship. In the context of rights for social-housing residents, the limited imaginary of who resides in social housing leaves out leaseholders, as well as tenants of such leaseholders. This is because, while a private tenant of a property bought under the right to buy might be able to oblige their immediate landlord to act under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act (hereafter, the HFFH Act) (risking potential retaliatory eviction in the process; see Walsh (Reference Walsh2021)), they have no direct relationship with whoever owns the block. The common parts fall outside the protections of the HFFH Act. Furthermore, the HFFH Act does not provide clear routes of redress for such tenants where there is a lack of clarity over whether the issues they are concerned about fall within the common parts or not. A private-rented-sector tenant living in a social-housing block who thinks their front door or their windows will not keep them safe from fire is not left with an easy way to ensure their home is safe.

This is significant because, as our research conducted on behalf of Shelter revealed (Cowan et al., Reference Cowan2017), complexities arising as a result of tenure are an important aspect of the marginalisation experienced by social-housing residents. Our research focused on how legislation (and its enforcement) made homes less safe or prevented households from remedying problems. It included a survey that received 947 responses including 642 occupiers, of whom 71 per cent were owner-occupiers, 13 per cent came from social tenants and 11 per cent were from the private rented sector. Many responses to these ostensibly clear and distinct categories flagged the complexities of mixed tenure in social housing. For example, one respondent who described themselves as a ‘social tenant’ explained they were ‘privately renting an ex local-authority flat. Placed in another Borough by LA to meet their requirement to permanently house us due to homelessness’, while one ‘private tenant’ stated they lived in a ‘1st floor studio flat. Housing Association’ and another described themselves as living in ‘ex local authority, now privately rented’.

The research highlighted the interdependence of homes and the absence of effective systems to enable exercise of resident voice. Many responses illustrated problems that could not be pinned down to an individual property but were part of a wider issue with a building, while a common theme across responses was frustration with dispersed responsibilities and, even where responsibility was clear, an inability to get an effective response. This also applied to many situations described to us in which residents had not relied on the private relationship but had sought support from the state using the mechanisms in the Housing Act 2004. This provides for local-authority environmental-health teams to assess potential hazards in the home and take enforcement action where hazards are identified. However, although tenure-neutral, even these tools are tenure-dependent. Environmental-health departments cannot act against their own local authority, leaving local-authority tenants without redress.

Drawing on our analysis, we argued for a culture change. There was an urgent need to move away from the patchily enforced, piecemeal, outdated, complex, tenure-dependent system, for the state to take greater responsibility for the safety of occupiers, all of whom should have enforceable rights to minimum standards. For us, individual rights and a consumerist understanding of the centrality of information provision were insufficient in themselves to improve the lived experience of residents. This contestation about when the state's responsibility towards a consumer is engaged was starkly illustrated by the next intervention that we explore, which is focused specifically on residents of social housing.

6 The White Paper (‘WP’)

The social-housing WP – tellingly entitled The Charter for Social Housing Residents – speaks to the issues identified by the Secretary of State in the foreword, producing a new charter for residents against the new policy mantra of ‘levelling up this country, making it fairer for everyone’ (ibid., p. 5). We say that its title is telling because its themes are reminiscent of Prime Minister John Major's Citizen's Charter (the apostrophe being in a critical position, highlighting its individualist ethos), which itself focused on four themes – quality, choice, standards and value (Cabinet Office, 1991). A further telling point lies in the focus of the paper on residents, as opposed to tenants. This suggests a recognition that social-housing spaces include private tenants, leaseholders and shared owners, all of whom have significant voices that have been heard over the years (and again recently, for example, in the alterations to the shared-ownership offer: MHCLG, 2021a). However, as the extracts and quotes that we include below demonstrate, the focus remains on the resident as a social tenant.

The WP draws from and develops (or, perhaps better, waters down) a Green Paper that drew on the views of ‘8,000 conversations and submissions’ with residents and spanned three housing ministers from its announcement to publication (MHCLG, 2018). That innovative approach was obviously a direct response to the perception that policy-makers were out of touch. It reflected an apparently renewed faith in the authenticity of qualitative experiences over less vivid scientific explanations; and, perhaps more importantly, provided the cloak of legitimacy for the proposed action. One strand of that action, announced in the preface to the Green Paper, was the decision not to press ahead with two of the ambulance-type policies in social housing (the move to fixed-term tenancies and sale of high-value social housing).

What underpins both documents, but particularly the slimmed-down WP, is a recognition of the resident as an active consumer, who wishes to assert their individual rights but lacks access to justice (through the ombudsman) and performance information; needs a strong regulator; and wants a good-quality neighbourhood and home, but also to exit into home ownership. All of these have been familiar tropes in social-housing law and policy since the 1990s (at the latest) and the solutions are what we might term ‘Cave-ist’, as they largely follow the critique and approach of Martin Cave in his report on social-housing regulation, which gave rise to the TSA and which the coalition government renounced (see Cowan, Reference Cowan2011).

The WP can be regarded, therefore, as a volte-face and a refutation of the coalition government approach with respect to consumer-protection standards. This is ‘normal science’, although the justifications – for a Conservative government returning to a New Labour proactive consumer regulatory ideal – are differently packaged:

As the WP took shape, it became clear that the National Tenants Voice organisation was not to be reinstated. Indeed, although the Green Paper contained considerable detail on tenant-empowerment initiatives, the WP is at best disappointing. It focuses on information asymmetry and administrative justice almost at the expense of tenant participation. The few pages in the WP that address this (pp. 47–49, including one photograph page) do little more than tinker at the edges (with training and professional development, and loneliness programmes). The regulator is expected to require social-housing providers ‘to show how they have sought out and considered ways to improve tenant engagement’ (para. 90), but this is substantially watered down from the extensive discussion in the Green Paper.

What is apparent is that the kind of citizenship vision for social-housing residents envisaged by the WP is the kind of individualised and consumerist approach that is characteristic of ‘blue rinse’ administrative law approaches (Harlow and Rawlings, Reference Harlow and Rawlings2012, pp. 56–70). There is a strong reliance on classic market mechanisms (provision of information) and an enhanced agencification role (for the regulator) that includes audit and inspection of individual providers. The very idea of a charter reinforces that notion of a private-sector, contract-like culture. It should be relatively obvious that social housing does not work like that. Tenants have no choice – if their provider performs abysmally, they have no ability to move to a different provider (other than through a bureaucratically managed transfer process); usually, they have no choice of provider when they access social housing. In many areas, there is a near-monopoly provider locally.

This problematic also provides an explanation for what is a final oddity in the WP. In a response to stigmatisation and marginalisation, the reference in the closing paragraphs (153–161) to the reinvigoration of various exit mechanisms is, at best, jarring. However, this consideration is entirely consonant with the approach to social housing that has been in place for forty or so years with only a short period of retrenchment. And, in a WP that emphasises a charter approach, the right of exit fits neatly. Rather than an oddity, it is consistent with the government approach continuing the pattern of thought since the foundation of council housing (i.e. its uneven development was regarded as being limited by a desire to sell it). The role of the market and the social-housing resident's relationship to it were questions that were also fundamental to the final post-Grenfell initiative that consider: policy shifts on building safety.

7 Building regulation and building-safety reforms

The inadequacy of England's building regulations was immediately implicated in the fire (Apps, Reference Apps2018). The problematic combustibility of the aluminium composite material cladding used in the refurbishment of the Tower meant there were ramifications across the UK. In a House of Commons statement in September 2017, the then Communities Secretary Sajid Javid indicated that 165 social-housing towers had cladding systems that failed combustibility tests alongside an unknown number of private towers, foreshadowing years of anxiety for thousands of tower-block residents (Javid, Reference Javid2017). He also announced that other building defects had been uncovered during health-and-safety inspections, cementing beliefs that the fatalities were not an unforeseen accident, but an inevitable consequence of a failed regulatory system.

The focus on building regulations revealed two problems. First, there was a lack of clarity about the meaning of the regulations. While government insisted that the type of cladding used on Grenfell Tower and many other high-rise residential buildings was prohibited, many industry experts claimed that it was permitted. There were unfavourable comparisons made with European and American regulations. Nor could the government claim surprise. It had been alerted to the problematic nature of cladding on refurbished buildings by the inquest into the Lakanal House fire in 2009, which included a finding by the jury that the external panelling had contributed to the deaths of six people (Kirton-Darling, Reference Kirton-Darling, Carr, Edgeworth and Hunter2018, p. 189).

The other problem with building regulations was that there was no clear responsibility for non-compliance; indeed, it appeared there was a culture of minimal compliance. The government had a role in this. During the 1980s, there had been a shift from prescribed standards to an outcomes-based system of regulation that in effect placed industry rather than government as the main arbiter of safety. The explanation was the need to encourage innovation, but a preference for a privatised market model of governance also informed the shift. So, for instance, local-authority building-control officers had to compete with private providers, not only driving down prices, but also creating competition around minimising compliance. Since the 1980s, a rhetoric of deregulation had permeated government that was intensified by a populist onslaught following the election of the coalition government in 2010. There was a lot then at stake for the government; acknowledging the failure of building regulations risked accepting the failure of the dominant mode of government.

The Hackitt review, set up in July 2017, was therefore an important initial response to the Grenfell Tower fire. There was nothing in the terms of reference that suggested the review was going to reject rather than reform the existing regulatory model. Its purpose was twofold – to make recommendations to ensure that the regulatory system was sufficiently robust and to provide assurance to residents that the buildings they live in are safe and remain so (MHCLG, 2017). Resident confidence was to be a crucial element of restoring trust in building regulations to be achieved by making residents integral to the regulatory system. That is not to say that Dame Hackitt was not empathetic to the residents. Her foreword to the interim report published December 2017 made this clear:

However, there was also something instrumental about her references to the residents:

These residents were not angry, traumatised or depressed. They were reasonable, realistic, pragmatic and patient. This simultaneously acted as a rebuff to those landlords who had failed to engage with residents about building safety and positions residents in relation to the new system of building regulation that Hackitt is proposing. They are legitimate stakeholders and incorporating them into the reformed system provides an essential legitimacy to those reforms.

The interim report described Hackitt's direction of travel. Evidence from residents was taken seriously. In particular, the interim report recognised that residents had not been heard on fire safety and wanted a greater role and that ‘complexity of tenures and the lack of a national representative tenants’ organisation hinder a constructive relationship between building owners/landlords/managing agents and their tenants or leaseholders’ (ibid., p. 87). Arguing that no voice should be excluded, the final report published in May 2018 made clear that its recommendations applied to all residents, regardless of tenure.

Three themes informed the final report's proposals on resident voice: reassurance, recourse and responsibilities. Reassurance here means providing safety information to residents and educating them on safe behaviour. It also requires that residents are engaged in decision-making about the building. There are benefits to informed engagement: ‘Residents themselves will often be best placed to support the dutyholder in making decisions that impact on the safety of the building and can help the dutyholder to meet their wider duties’ (Hackitt, Reference Hackitt2018, p. 67); and ‘Informed residents can play a key role in monitoring the performance of safety systems and holding building owners to account for weaknesses in performance’ (ibid., p. 68).

Recourse means ensuring that resident complaints about building safety are heard. What was proposed is that the building managers identify someone to whom the residents can complain and residents need to be assured that those complaints will not lead to negative consequences. It suggests that unresolved complaints go to a regulator – a beefed-up housing ombudsman was envisioned. There is some consideration of legal routes of redress – the report recognises that the law does not ‘necessarily provide the quick and accessible route to redress that residents require’ (ibid., p. 69). It makes no recommendations for improving the law but notes the Housing (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill (which at the time was being debated in parliament).

It is no surprise that resident responsibility is a key theme of the reform proposals, even though there has been no suggestion that resident irresponsibility played any part in the fire. It appears impossible in policy discourse to decouple resident rights from resident responsibilities. The report addresses frequently voiced complaints from social landlords about the difficulties of getting access to individual flats as well as the importance of residents maintaining safety features in their homes. What appears as common sense serves as a reminder of the contingency of resident empowerment.

There are important references to the need for cultural change within the report; what needs to change is a culture of ‘a “race to the bottom” caused either through ignorance, indifference, or because the system does not facilitate good practice’ (ibid., p. 5). It is easy to overlook this extraordinary indictment of contemporary building regulation which suggests that flagrant disregard for the health and safety of residents has been institutionalised. The report depoliticises and sanitises this conclusion; and, rather than examining its causes, including the role played by the market, it accepts the status quo grafting reform onto the existing infrastructure. Indeed, the flat-footedness of the politics of the report is demonstrated by its failure to ban combustible cladding, which threatened to undermine the credibility of the report (Wilmore, Reference Wilmore2018).

Instead, the report's headline conclusion is consumerist – building regulations are not ‘fit for purpose’. Consumerism frames the reform proposals. There are significant gaps in the analysis. How, for instance, do the individual rights of consumers work within the more collective rhetoric of resident empowerment? Moreover, consumerism imagines a homogeneous educated and time-rich citizenry as well as a properly functioning market. It is unconvincing as a tool to protect the lives of the heterogeneous, frequently time-poor and vulnerable residents of social housing.

The Building Safety Bill, introduced into parliament in July 2021, puts the Hackitt proposals into statutory form. The Bill sets out a pyramid of responsibilities with a new regulator, part of the Health and Safety Executive, at its apex. The regulator will be responsible for the new regime, overseeing the registration and inspection of higher-risk buildings (buildings over eighteen metres) and with significant powers, for instance, to authorise remedial works, stop non-compliant projects and institute special measures for failing projects. At the building level, ‘Accountable Persons’, usually the owners or managers of the buildings, will have legal responsibilities for the safety of the building. Accountable Persons must appoint Building Safety Managers, who will be responsible for the day-to-day management of fire and structural safety in the building. At the base of the pyramid are the residents of higher-risk buildings, who will be obliged to keep their property in good repair, co-operate with the managers to fulfil building-safety duties and not hinder or damage fire-safety works or equipment. Accountable Persons will have rights to enter residents’ dwellings and issue enforcement notices, which will be enforceable in the courts. Resident involvement is built into every level of the pyramid, with the regulator, the Accountable Person and the Building Safety Manager all obliged to consult with them.

The Bill represents a policy shift – building safety was not on the political agenda prior to the fire and deregulation appears to have been sidelined. Moreover, the involvement of residents provides the opportunity for a collective voice to be heard, which may be harder to resist post the fire. But the shift we would suggest is minor in comparison, for instance, with the market-oriented shift in the 1980s from prescribed to outcomes-based building-safety standards. The market remains at the heart of the system and resident interests will have to compete with industrial priorities such as cost-effectiveness and innovation.