Balconies Feature Balcony fire safety Richard Izzard of AliDeck explores the prevalence and causes of balcony fires.
Maintenance & Refurbishment
F
ollowing the Grenfell tragedy, various building regulation updates and Government initiatives have attempted to resolve the flammable cladding issue by outlawing combustible materials and mandating its replacement
in existing buildings with non-combustible alternatives. Progress has been slow, however, and there remain many high-rise buildings
still clad in the same or similar material as that used on Grenfell Tower. Major upheaval was caused in the property market as lenders became
reluctant to provide mortgages for homes within buildings suspected to have combustible cladding on their external walls. The External Wall Fire Review/EWS1 process was developed as a solution to
this issue via a cross-industry working group consisting of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Building Societies Association (BSA), and UK Finance. Launched in December 2019, this process was intended to provide a framework by which mortgage lenders could be assured that the risk on their loans was suitably mitigated, unblocking the logjam and allowing homeowners to sell their properties. Unfortunately, the reality has been far removed from the hope.
ISSUES PLAGUE EWS1 The EWS1 process was, unquestionably, developed with the best of intentions, but there are clearly gaps in its execution through which many landlords continue to fall. Primarily, the scheme began to fall apart when the Government issued a new Advice Note in January 2020 that dramatically increased the scale
For new-build projects, the use of non-combustible elements in the external envelope of buildings is now an absolute requirement
of affected buildings by expanding the scope of the Advice to cover buildings below 18m. A profound shortage of qualified inspectors, risk-averse lenders over-
applying the process, and potentially many tens of thousands of buildings requiring inspection has led to a total log-jam in the market, and landlords have again found themselves trapped with their properties being valued at nil. A major emerging issue, however, is the impact that combustible materials on
balconies are having. Buildings with no flammable cladding or any other fire safety issues are failing EWS1 inspection when the balconies have timber or composite materials in their construction, leading to lenders refusing to provide mortgages for any properties in the block, even those without balconies.
COMBUSTIBLE MATERIALS ON BALCONIES Balcony living is rapidly becoming the norm for an increasing proportion of the population, particularly so in lockdown. While there are many pleasures to be
www.housingmmonline.co.uk | HMM December/January 2021 | 33
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