ARCHITECT PETER Drummond criticised the government’s attempts to ‘weaken Scotland’s tougher fire regulations’ by moving to ‘standardise’ UK regulations.
Architects Journal hosted an opinion piece from Mr Drummond, who began by discussing the Garnock Court fire in 1999 in Irvine that ‘took less than 10 minutes’ to spread to the 12th floor via ‘recently installed external cladding’. One person died and five were injured, and he pointed out that the same year saw a parliamentary inquiry, which featured evidence from the Fire Brigades Union that was ‘particularly telling’ in ‘noting the risk posed’ by combustible or ‘badly installed’ cladding.
These risks included the cladding ‘vented through room windows’ and travelling up the building’s sides, and the report found that while most cladding did not pose a ‘serious threat to life during a fire’, there were ‘still risks’, and the system of assessing safety was ‘not fully effective’. It noted in turn that ‘it should take a serious fire in which many people are killed before all reasonable steps are taken towards minimising the risks.
‘The evidence we have received strongly suggests that the small-scale tests which are currently used to determine the fire safety of external cladding systems are not fully effective in evaluating their performance in a “live” fire situation. As a more appropriate test for external cladding systems now exists, we see no reason why it should not be used.’
The report concluded that ‘all external cladding systems should be required either to be entirely non-combustible, or to be proven through full-scale testing not to pose an unacceptable level of risk in terms of fire spread’, recommending compliance with standards set in a test for assessing fire performance of external cladding submitted to the British Standards Institution and to be substituted in Approved Document B for ‘previous requirements’.
As a result, the English building regulations were ‘subsequently – if somewhat tortuously – revised’ to rule that external envelops ‘should not provide a medium for fire spread’, and should meet performance criteria in BR 135 or BS 8414, though Mr Drummond noted that the changes ‘made provision, perhaps surprisingly’, for desktop assessments ‘in some circumstances’.
The Scottish position however was ‘significantly different’, with its building regulations ‘substantially different’ to England’s, and its government was ‘rather less persuaded’, moving ‘fairly quickly’ to introduce the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004, which included a mandatory regulation that ‘every building must be designed and constructed in such a way that in the event of an outbreak of fire within […] or from an external source, the spread of fire on the external walls of the building is inhibited’.
Associated technical standards ‘went significantly further’, with aluminium composite material banned on buildings over 18m and external cladding fitted before 2005 needing to meet a Class – classification, while ‘enhanced’ requirements for cladding and insulation on new build and refurbished domestic blocks were included; and desktop studies ‘were not recognised as an appropriate means of assessing the fire performance’ of cladding.
Post Grenfell, Mr Drummond went on, 450 residential buildings over 18m were found to have ACM, but ‘these numbers […] only scratch the surface’, as ACM and other combustible systems ‘exist on many other properties below’ 18m. Scotland meanwhile had ‘only a handful of such properties’, with the Scottish building regulation changes meant this number ‘was a fraction’ of those in England.
He said that this was ‘just one of a number of areas where Scottish regulatory framework has been quite different’ from the rest of the UK, and it has ‘never been possible to legally commence work’ in Scotland ‘without prior approval of a Building Warrant’, so a ‘full and proper review is carried out before construction’. No ‘privatised’ building control system exists, and applicants have to go to local authorities and not look for someone ‘quicker, cheaper, or more sympathetic’.
Despite this, the system has ‘not, however, been without problems’, Mr Drummond recalling the collapse of a brick outer wall on Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh during a storm in January 2016, which found that ‘incorrect installation of wall ties’ had ‘reduced the structural capacity of the walls and their ability to resist the forces’.
An inquiry ‘raised concerns’ over failures in the construction industry, specifically non compliance with building standards and defects that ‘could seriously compromise’ safety. Recommendations on improved inspection and compliance measures ‘are currently being developed’, but the UK government’s recent white paper ‘included a rather startling series of statements’ relating to diverging national policies.
It stated that ‘without an up-to-date, coherent market structure, economic barriers could block or inhibit trade in goods across the UK, and services could be significantly and detrimentally impacted. Complexities in key sectors such as construction could arise, were difference in regulations to emerge over time.
‘If England and Scotland diverged on their approach to building regulations or processes for obtaining construction permits, it would become significantly more difficult for construction firms to design and plan projects effectively across the UK’. Mr Drummond noted that after the draft single market bill was published, ‘close scrutiny’ revealed the ‘hooks upon which’ this might be implemented, in that goods approved in one part of the UK ‘cannot be restricted’ in other parts.
Another element would mean that ‘anything which would prevent a professional from carrying out their work in any other part of the UK without impediment is made illegal’, with common standards applied, and Mr Drummond said that ‘the implications of this are potentially fatal for the Scottish regulatory framework’, as for example ‘if we in Scotland were to ultimately ban’ combustible cladding ‘completely, then we would be acting illegally’.
Other examples included stipulating origins of materials, which could end up being ‘construed as favouring home-grown materials over UK or foreign trade agreements’, and the Building Safety Bill could ‘limit Scotland’s ability’ to introduce its own compliance regime reflecting local forms of construction, while procurement regimes ‘would be severely limited’.
As the Grenfell inquiry continues, Mr Drummond noted that the ‘direction of travel’ includes ‘systemic failure, a lack of regulatory oversight, [and] a poor or negligible understanding of safety risks’, and ‘it appears that the tragedy foreseen’ by the committee in 1999 ‘has occurred and only now are we seeing meaningful steps to put in place an improved – but far from perfect – regime for use in England’.
With this, it is ‘simply inexplicable’ that the changes planned ‘seek to align the more robust Scottish regulations with the English system’, and if the documents ‘are to be taken at face value’, Scottish powers brought in to protect residents ‘are now to be removed’, with ‘the lowest common denominator within the UK’ to apply. He concluded that this was ‘on any fair reading, a spectacularly poor step backwards. We should all be concerned’.