THE TRAINING course developed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to help train more people to undertake external wall surveys (EWS1) has seen 1,200 registrations.
The form, introduced in December 2019, aimed to ‘create a standardised process that would make it easier for brokers and homeowners to find suitable mortgages’. A valuer could request it from a building owner or representative, and require a professional ‘confirm that the actual material on the walls posed a limited risk or was non-combustible’.
Should it contain materials that ‘posed a significant fire risk’, a ‘detailed description of what was needed to fix it had to be issued’, but lenders began rejecting mortgage applications. This was because of ‘outstanding cladding inspections trapping borrowers with their current providers’, and so applications were being cancelled due to inspection requests being delayed.
As a result of government advice ‘a much larger number of buildings’ fell into scope ‘than had been envisaged’, and the process ‘lacked sufficient input from leaseholder representatives, but also other important stakeholders, including the insurance industry’. RICS urged the government ‘to take greater ownership of the situation’, and Minister for Fire and Building Safety Lord Greenhalgh held talks with RICS to ‘attempt to resolve confusion’.
Then, Housing Minister Christopher Pincher stated mortgage lenders are reviewing how the forms are used, though some residents have been told by housing associations that they ‘cannot produce’ the form for possibly ‘several years’. He later admitted that there are ‘fewer than 300’ qualified chartered fire engineers to undertake the surveys.
In late August last year, Which? revealed leaseholders are ‘being duped into paying thousands’ to fraudsters using fake forms, and the crisis saw mortgage brokers report ‘delays and scuppered plans’ for clients. The Fire Industry Association launched a portal that will ‘provide a central readily-accessible location for EWS1 forms’ and allow fire engineers to complete forms online.
After this, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reported that the government and banks are working on a more ‘risk-based’ approach to assessing properties with cladding. More recently, Mr Pincher ‘refused to acknowledge’ any role in the issues stemming from government guidance, stating that the Advice for Building Owners of Multi-storey, Multi-occupied Residential Buildings guidance – released in January – ‘was written for building owners to ensure the safety of their buildings. It was not designed to be used for valuation purposes’.
In late November, Mr Johnson ‘slammed’ mortgage lenders for use of the form, but ‘failed to promise that leaseholders would not have to pay for cladding removal’, and in December the director of delivery at the Conveyancing Association (CA) revealed that the results of EWS1 surveys can be hidden if administrators want them to be.
Also in November, the government announced it would help homeowners by ensuring that owners of flats in buildings without cladding ‘will no longer need an EWS1 form to sell or remortgage’, as part of an agreement the government claimed it had reached with RICS, UK Finance and the Building Societies Association (BSA).
However, UK Finance and the BSA ‘did not consent’ to being part of the announcement, which said EWS1 forms ‘are not and have never been required’ for buildings without cladding. A finance industry source also said the proposal ‘did not mean properties with issues other than cladding would automatically be exempt’ from an EWS1 survey.
Buildings with wooden balconies and other issues ‘should have been included among those which still required’ external fire safety checks, and it would depend on the decision of a ‘suitably qualified, independent and properly insured surveyor’. The UK Cladding Action Group also pointed out that only a ‘small subset’ of buildings would benefit.
The UK mortgage industry added that this ‘does not solve the problem’ and that it ‘it changed nothing’ for buyers or sellers. In October, Mr Johnson had revealed that a reassessment of the form was being undertaken by RICS, after the housing, communities and local government committee (HCLGC) had, last year, branded the form ‘slow and expensive’.
In January, a report from consultants Capital Economics found that around 1.27m flats in England ‘could be unmortgageable’ due to combustible cladding concerns. The consultants added that ‘if it was to be assumed’ that the government’s November statement in relation to EWS1 not applying to certain buildings ‘made no difference to the behaviour of lenders’, complications ‘could affect’ all buildings taller than 11m or three storeys.
Most recently, RICS launched a consultation on new guidance that aimed to ‘clarify’ buildings that are required to undertake an EWS1 survey, and to ‘significantly’ reduce the number of properties requiring one. The guidance ‘looks to clarify’ building types that surveyors and mortgage lenders ‘should demand’ an EWS1 form for before the sale or purchase of apartments.
This includes removing the need for one on a building taller than 18m without cladding or curtain wall glazing, as well as those below six storeys with ‘less than a quarter’ of the building façade covered in non metal composite cladding, and RICS hopes that the new guidance ‘could be in place as early as the spring’.
The new guidance is also ‘aimed at providing consistent advice on when’ EWS1 forms should be requested, with a move away from using metres to measure height and instead the ‘more easily measurable number of storeys’. Buildings above six do not require an EWS1 if ‘there is no cladding or curtain wall glazing on the building and if there are balconies where the balustrades and decking are constructed of combustible materials (eg timber) and they are not stacked vertically above each other’.
For buildings of five or six storeys, a form is not required if ‘there is not a significant amount of cladding on the building (for the purpose of this guidance, approximately one quarter of the surface facade is a significant amount) and there are no aluminium composite material (ACM) or metal composite material (MCM) panels on the building’; nor if ‘there are balconies where the balustrades and decking are constructed with combustible materials (eg timber) and they are not stacked vertically above each other’.
Finally, for buildings four storeys or below, a form is not required if there ‘are no ACM or MCM panels on the building’, though for all three categories RICS noted that ‘metal cladding and ACM or MCM are visually very similar, so if metal cladding is present, the valuer should either confirm with the building owner or managing agent in writing that they are not ACM or MCM, or an EWS inspection should be requested’.
The guidance was developed after discussions with fire safety experts, mortgage lenders and other stakeholders, and ‘matches’ consolidated advice on external walls published by the government in January 2020. RICS is now calling on groups and individuals – namely leaseholders and landlords – to respond by 25 January to the consultation’s proposals.
Mortgage Solutions has now reported that the first 100 surveyors have begun RICS’ EWS1 training programme, which has received over 1,200 registrations since being announced last year. With ‘barely’ 300 qualified at this point, there is a ‘massive backlog’, and so ‘hundreds of thousands of properties are currently unable to be bought or sold’, leaving residents ‘stuck in potentially dangerous buildings with escalating bills for waking watches and other safety measures’.
The news outlet noted that it ‘is hoped the wave of newly-qualified assessors’ will enable surveys ‘tp be completed far quicker’, with the consultation continuing having received 390 responses ‘so far’. Two thirds of those response have come from leaseholders or prospective buyers, while the other third are from industry professionals or firms, with the guidance note proposed having been downloaded over 900 times as well.
RICS aims to formalise the guidance changes at the end of February ‘pending agreement with key stakeholders’ as well as its own independent standards and regulation board, with a spokeswoman stating: ‘To help address the acute market shortage of regulated professionals who can carry out EWS1 assessments, we’re delighted to see over 1,200 chartered surveyors register their interest for the EWS1 assessment training programme to date.
‘The first group of 100 successful applicants started the programme last week, with more people being enrolled weekly. We look forward to supporting fire engineers in the task ahead and creating additional capacity in the market to help those who are waiting on an EWS1 assessment.’
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