FOCUS
Next moves Jonathan Evans pulls no punches in his straight
talking perspective on where building safety and fire regulations need to go in the public interest
I
N LATE 2014, it was evident that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) had two pressing
issues to contend with. The Secretary of State, Lord Pickles, had received a letter from the Lakanal House inquest coroner urging a review of Approved Document B (ADB) of the Building Regulations, and minutes from a meeting with the Centre for Window and Cladding Technology (CWCT) show that there were concerns about the use of aluminium composite material (ACM) in the aftermath of numerous portentous fi res around the world.
ADB review?
Later that same year, it appears that MHCLG therefore commissioned the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to investigate whether the current guidance relating to external fire spread needed to be reviewed. Almost two years later, the conclusion of that BRE investigation by Crowder, Shipp and Holland was: ‘With the exception of one or two unfortunate but rare cases, there is currently no evidence
46 JUNE 2020
www.frmjournal.com
from these investigations to suggest that the current recommendations, to limit vertical fi re spread up the exterior of high-rise buildings, are failing in their purpose.’ Consequently, there were no significant
changes to ADB, nor was there any guidance issued in the meantime urging building control to exercise caution on the approval of polyethylene (PE) cored ACM. Perhaps the Grenfell public inquiry will reveal why this failed to happen.
Blinkered ACM focus
Since the tragedy, it’s fair to say that almost every aspect of ADB external wall fire spread guidance has unravelled step by step with each catastrophic fi re. After Grenfell, the initial focus of MHCLG and its advice seemed to be to contain the scale of the problem and the associated impact on the Treasury. The blinkered focus was on ACM on buildings over 18m, downplaying the potential for issues extending to other materials and lower, more numerous buildings. When I was invited to
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