FOCUS Toxicity threats
This is untrue – so she spent nine months under the impression that the industry was incapable or unwilling to follow the guidance or regulations provided to it. In my view this undermines the credibility of both herself to some extent, and all her recommendations. In fact, whenever the much debated inadequacies of ADB have been raised, B4 has often been cited as being the underlying requirement, and has to my knowledge largely gone unchallenged.
Change needed
Figure 1: FPA toxicity test project November 2018. The vent is shown highlighted.
In fact, she ignored current regulations and guidance to such an extent that on the day her report was published, she said: ‘I’m very clear that the regulations and the guidance that exist today already say that the only type of cladding that you can use on high-rise buildings must either be of limited combustibility or must be subject to a full test.’
I believe however, that B4 needs to change. We are often told that it isn’t usually fire that kills, it is smoke. Unfortunately, MHCLG has a morbid obsession with needing ‘evidence’ to justify its actions rather than applying common sense. External fires such as Grenfell and Lakanal present a contentious issue here – external cladding systems often comprise combustible materials, and the market for these products is large and lucrative. For many years, there have been confrontations within industry over whether toxicity should be regulated. Despite most of the Lakanal deaths being attributed to smoke inhalation, there was no clear evidence that this came from the external materials and not the flat contents, which are mostly impossible to control. However, key evidence from the first
phase report by the Grenfell inquiry strongly suggests that residents may have become incapacitated before the fire had broken into the flats. Given the apparent lack of compartmentation, this would seem highly probable. Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s summary talks
Figure 2: Excerpt from the Grenfell inquiry’s first phase report, with emphasis on smoke highlighted. 26 MARCH 2020
www.frmjournal.com
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