Housing secretary Angela Rayner has announced a new cladding remediation plan, to begin this autumn.

Speaking at the Labour annual conference in Liverpool, Rayner said it was “completely unacceptable that we have thousands of buildings still wrapped in unsafe cladding seven years after Grenfell”.

Accordingly, she said that was why the government was bringing forward a new remediation action plan to speed up the process and pursue those responsible “without fear or favour”.

Rayner said: “Working with the Prime Minister on the Grenfell Inquiry was the most sobering moment of my career: 72 lives lost, 18 children, all avoidable. A fatal failure of market and state. A tragedy that must never happen again.”

She also slammed the previous government’s record, claiming that “under the Tories, new social housing plummeted”.

Rayner said that Labour would “reverse that tide – with an ambition to be build more social homes than we lose, within the first financial year of this Labour Government”.

She promised that the government will take action “to ensure all homes are decent and safe, and residents are treated with the respect they deserve”.

She continued: “I will clamp down on damp and mouldy homes by bringing in Awaab’s Law in the social rented sector this autumn and we’ll extend it to the private rented sector too.

“We will also ensure social housing staff have the right skills and experience. And I will ensure 2.5 million housing association tenants in this country can hold their landlord to account for their high quality services and homes. So that repairs and complaints are handled faster, but more importantly, so social housing tenants are treated fairly.”

She also announced plans for the consultation and implementation of a new Decent Homes Standard.