Industry welcomes plan to toughen combustibles ban

Industry bodies have welcomed plans laid out by housing secretary Robert Jenrick to extend the ban on combustible materials in external walls to residential buildings of as little as three and four storeys.

Jenrick announced the proposal in the House of Commons yesterday amid a raft of new measures laid out prior to the resumption of the Grenfell Tower public inquiry.

Jenrick also laid out plans to ban aluminium composite material (ACM) with a polyethylene core – the type of cladding used on Grenfell Tower – on buildings of any height, and said he would next month start to “name and shame” private landlords that have not started work to remove dangerous cladding.

He proposed reducing the height both at which sprinklers are required and at which the combustibles ban comes into force from 18m to 11m.

Jane Duncan, chair of the RIBA Expert Advisory Group on Fire Safety, welcomed the proposals to extend requirements for sprinklers and the ban on combustible materials, but said still far too little had changed since the tragedy. “The RIBA will continue to lobby for strong baseline fire safety regulations on the use of combustible materials, means of warning and escape, and sprinkler systems, along with a comprehensive review of regulations and guidance. Urgent action is needed.”

Responding to Jenrick’s statement, shadow housing secretary John Healey welcomed many of the measures but said the government had to take responsibility for the fact 315 residential towers still had similar cladding to that used on Grenfell. “Thousands of people continue to live in unsafe homes, condemned to do so by this government’s failure on all fronts after Grenfell,” he said, asking why the government did not name and shame reclacitrant landlords immediately.

In addition to other measures, Jenrick said the government will:

• Set up a new building safety regulator with immediate effect, to run in shadow form until legislation is passed
• Consolidate 22 separate advice notes for building owners issued in the wake of Grenfell to one single document
• Consult on a new “matrix” system for measuring fire risk in buildings, rather than making distinctions on height alone
• Consider additional funding for leaseholders affected by large bills for remediation works for their homes

Fire Protection Association managing director Jonathan O’Neill also welcomed the proposed extension of the combustibles ban, but said he remained “concerned about the creation of a two-stream approach”, given that the new regulator will only oversee construction of high-risk residential buildings.

Jenrick  (pictured, left) revealed the plans in advance of the beginning of phase 2 of the Grenfell inquiry next week, which is due to consider in detail the nature of the 2014 refurbishment of the block, and whether the government could have done more to prevent the fire.

The consultation on extending the “combustibles ban” proposes reducing the building height at which the ban takes effect from 18m currently – around six storeys – to 11m, around three or four storeys. It also proposes extending the ban to cover hotels, hostels and boarding houses for the first time, and banning polyethylene-filled ACM cladding on all buildings of any height and type. Solar shading products such as blinds and shutters are also likely to be covered by the ban for the first time.

However, the review of the ban does not propose to make any allowances for the use of structural timber products such as cross-laminated tTimber (CLT) and glulam, which are caught by the ban but which proponents say are not a fire risk. Last week, housing association Swan became the latest modular housing pioneer to stop using CLT for its apartment products because of the impact of the regulation.

Jenrick said he had appointed Dame Judith Hackitt, who undertook the review of fire safety regulations for the government in the immediate aftermath of the fire, to chair a board that will oversee the transition from the current system to the regulator her report called for. Work to set up the regulator, which will be based within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), will start immediately, with Jenrick saying he expected it to be established in shadow form “within weeks”. The regulator will start recruiting for a first ever national chief inspector of buildings.

Hackitt’s report had originally proposed the new regulator be a joint body comprising the HSE alongside Local Authority Building Control (LABC) and Fire and Rescue Services. A spokeswoman said the timing of the legislation needed to grant the body formal powers, will be confirmed “in due course”.