The government’s ban on combustible cladding for high-rise residential buildings over 18m does not go far enough and should be extended to all buildings, an insurer has warned.
Zurich Municipal said it was backing a letter sent to the media earlier this week by Labour MP for Croydon Steve Reed and signed by 20 other MPs, who warned that the ban needed to be extended.
Reed argued that the ban did nothing to protect buildings such as schools and hospitals that were not above 18m and did not protect existing blocks where combustible materials are present.
Allison Whittington, head of housing at Zurich Municipal warned that a fire on buildings shorter then 18m with combustible cladding could still affect the safety of the building and allow for uncontrolled fire spread.
She said: “We strongly welcome Steve Reed and other Labour MPs’ call for the ban on combustible cladding to be extended to buildings of all heights as well as their calls for further clarification on the use of combustible cladding on both residential and non-residential buildings.
“As the proposals currently stand, a fire at lower levels could very easily negatively affect the level of safety provided to the overall building and significantly increase the potential for extensive and uncontrolled fire spread.
“Moreover, in recent years there have been a number of examples of high-rise office type occupancies being adapted and subject to change of use to residential occupancy.”
Whittington argued that a “safer and more straightforward rule” should apply to the entire wall height of both residential and non-residential buildings.
She added: “It would assist in ensuring consistency of building fire performance and offer robust future-proofing. It would also assist in reducing ambiguity and complexity surrounding differing performance requirements for only slightly differing occupancies whilst also minimising the potential for external fire spread beyond the reach of the fire service which must be the absolute priority of the ban.”
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Interesting. Those of us old enough to remember what happened with credit insurance just a few short years ago need no reminding of the insurance industry’s long and inglorious history of insisting we need its services, and then refusing to insure anything that contains even a moderate element of risk. But be that as it may.
What is particularly perverse here is that insurers insisted years ago that the Building Regs don’t go far enough to cover their risk, because the Regs are concerned principally with risk to life, rather than risk to assets. So they sponsored large-scale real-life tests like BR135, LPS1181 or FM4881, which go beyond individual products’ performance in lab tests and set test parameters closer to what would happen if somebody drove a burning car into your front door.
What, precisely, is now wrong with those years of solid historical test data which prompts Zurich Municipal to question their validity?