Contractor Beard has called for the government to extend new fire safety measures aimed at residential blocks over 11m, including mandatory sprinklers, to all high-rise buildings.
Housing secretary Robert Jenrick announced the measures last week but Beard chairman Mark Beard said he wanted to see the new safety standards go even further.
Beard, president-elect of the Chartered Institute of Building, said: “Safety of building occupants ought to be at the top of everyone’s list when it comes to construction.
“In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, the focus has rightly been on high-rise residential buildings. The new measures proposed by the government go a long way to addressing the issues exposed by that calamity and I look forward to seeing them enacted.
“But all building occupants need to be safe and feel safe, regardless of use. The government has said it will look at extending the scope of safety standards during the passage of the relevant legislation. I would strongly welcome such a move, with initial focus on the highest risk buildings.”
Beard called for a practical approach that had wider industry buy-in. He added: “The industry itself needs to take responsibility for ensuring these standards are rigorously applied in practice. This means getting it right first time, not waiting for enforcement action to be taken. At the end of the day all our reputations are at stake.”
Last week, Jenrick also announced that the government’s construction expert David Hancock has been appointed to review the progress of removing unsafe aluminium composite (ACM) cladding from buildings.
And the latest testing results for non-ACM cladding have been published, showing that none of the materials, including high-pressure laminate and timber cladding, behave in the same way as ACM. But the government said external wall systems on high-rise buildings using Class C or D HPL panels are unsafe “and should be removed as they do not comply with Building Regulations.”
