Industry News
Confused messages given over cladding
servant instructed councils they needed to check the safety of cladding on all buildings, irrespective of their height. Last year Ministers decided to ban combustible
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materials on buildings over 18 metres in height, in a response to the Grenfell Tower fire and the Hackitt Review on fire safety and building regulations. In doing so, it resisted pressure to ban combustible materials from all cladding. The instruction to check the safety on all
buildings was sent to local authority building control officers in a circular from Frances Kirwan, deputy director of building safety at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. They were told to check the safety of cladding on
all buildings, even those shorter than 18m. She added: “We are issuing this reminder because recent events have indicated that consideration is not routinely given to Requirement B4 and the need to resist the spread of fire over external walls in circumstances where the guidance… is not specific.” In a separate announcement a Government
he Government is running the risk of giving mixed messages to the housing and construction sectors after a senior civil
spokesman said high-pressure laminate (HPL) cladding should be removed from high-rise blocks if it is combined with combustible insulation.
MISLEADING ADVICE A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “There should be no buildings in this country with this combination of cladding and insulation. Building owners are legally responsible for ensuring the safety of their buildings and need to make sure this is the case.” HPL cladding is different from the ACM
cladding that was used on Grenfell Tower, but it is believed to have been used much more widely on thousands of medium and high rise buildings, both for residential and commercial use. The repercussions are potentially enormous and
will require many hundreds of millions of pounds to pay for the removal and replacement of HPL cladding. Labour MPs clashed with Housing Minister Kit Malthouse accusing him of misleading Parliament over HPL and whether it had been the subject of safety tests. Meanwhile it was revealed in July that a privately funded safety test on the ACM cladding of the type
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “There should be no buildings in this country with this combination of cladding and insulation. Building owners are legally responsible for ensuring the safety of their buildings and need to make sure this is the case.”
used on Grenfell Tower, had shown that it should not have been awarded a fire safety rating. The British Board of Agrément had originally
certified the Reynobond PE cladding panels (aluminium sheets with a polythene core) as Class 0 in 2008. The manufacturer Arconic subsequently marketed ACM as achieving this standard. But a new test on ACM panels by Warrington Fire ended prematurely when the polythene melted as the panels were heated.
No funding for removal of combustible balconies
The Government is refusing to provide funds for the removal of balconies made from combustible materials after a fire badly damaged a block of flats in east London. Samuel Garside House in Barking had to
be evacuated after a fire quickly spread from a single balcony, to rage across the external timber cladding on the walls and balconies. The fire destroyed 20 flats and damaged another ten. Fortunately only two residents suffered injuries from smoke inhalation. After their evacuation residents claimed there
were problems with the building’s fire doors, the water sprinkler system and the fire alarm, raising a host of issues about the safety of the six-storey block and many others built to a similar design and with identical materials. The ban on combustible materials brought in last November only applies to balconies and external
walls on buildings above 18 metres in height. Samuel Garside House is below 18 metres. A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government said that building owners should remove combustible materials from balconies “as soon as is practical”, regardless of the height of the building. Speaking at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s
annual conference, Housing Minister Kit Malthouse said the Government was still consulting on its legislation to implement the Hackitt Review recommendations, and that building height would be part of that. He said the MHCLG would not contribute
money towards the work. Malthouse said: “It’s not envisaged that there money for this work at the moment. As we’ve said, building owners are responsible for the safety of their buildings.
EXTRA CHECKS “ACM [aluminium composite material, which was used to clad Grenfell Tower] is an exceptional situation where we’ve had to act quickly and frankly. With ACM, quite a lot of private sector owners and developers are fronting the bills anyway. But with balconies, we’re not currently envisioning any funding, no.” During his keynote speech, the minister focused heavily on the design and quality of new housing.
16 | HMM August/September 2019 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
He suggested that poor design standards in new housing was holding back developments. “Ask yourself, why aren’t you welcomed into an area… might it be something to do with the style, with the design of the product?” Not surprisingly given its experience
with Grenfell Tower, but Kensington and Chelsea Council has responded to the Barking fire and Government advice by saying it will check the balconies on its homes for fire safety issues. A council spokesman initially said it was too
early to say whether they would remove any combustible materials found on balconies, but they will check the insulation used underneath and other materials. Subsequently they revised this to say they will remove and replace any materials they are not satisfied with. It is also writing to housing associations and private landlords in the borough to ask them to check balconies on their buildings as well. Councillor Kim Taylor-Smith, deputy leader of
RBKC, said: “We have a number of families in the borough who have been rehoused after the Grenfell tragedy two years ago and we will make sure their homes are prioritised. But this is a borough-wide effort and goes hand in hand with other measures we are putting in place, including fire door upgrades.”
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