Building Safety Bill

Further written evidence submitted by Henry Grala, on behalf of Drayton Park Residential Group (BSB38)

Building Safety Bill

Current legislation places the accountability for Fire Safety in buildings entirely with Freeholders, developers, and builders. It also places accountability for all costs on leaseholders. With the very onerous Fire Safety requirements introduced through Government advice notes for all buildings regardless of Fire strategy, the Freeholders have been quite happy to implement extensive repairs whether necessary or not regardless of cost as they are not paying for it. There is no incentive to assess the integrity of buildings holistically to mitigate intervention. This has led to unaffordable costs for leaseholders, with little consequence of poor construction and workmanship  on the Developers and Builders who caused it. It is leading to considerable hardship, bankruptcy, homelessness for leaseholders. 

Whether Government makes sweeping statements like withdrawal of EWS1 form or not, will make no difference to the Mortgage and Insurance industries. A proportionate response to this Cladding Scandal could only be achieved if Government takes control and legislates such that Financial consequences of Freeholders actions rests with Developers, Builders, Government not with leaseholders.

Fire Assessors are now nervous of accepting BRE guidelines and British Standards. Insurers are placing crippling excesses on yearly renewal of insurance policies of Developers, Builders and Fire Assessors. and this is for retrospective work carried out by these firms. Sometimes as much as an excess of £1M. This is causing these companies to exercise extreme risk aversion on historic fire defects.

Example. In our case we have some Fire doors where the gap at the bottom is larger than 8mm. We want to carry out remedial works installing proprietary drop down fire seals to BS476 which include fire and smoke tests. This is an accepted industry solution. The assessor has rejected it saying the seals could melt in a fire. They recommend a waking watch at vast expense and want the doors and frames replaced. This will weaken the surrounding walls where the door frames are to be broken out and could lead to worse defects than the gap under the doors.

It seems Government intervention with its sweeping recent guidelines has invalidated previous BRE guidelines and British Standards and that risk averse assessors will ignore them.

Why should taxpayers pay for the BRE and production of British Standards when they are now being ignored? Should the BRE now be wound down/closed as its recommendations are  being treated as invalid? how will the government compensate leaseholders for the incompetent guidance it has given in the past on Fire Safety?

The proposed draft PAS9980 rumoured to be be introduced in December to help mitigate extreme risk aversion is likely to have the opposite effect as it is more subjective relying on the Fire Assessors experience.The Fire Assessor  will be conscious of the massive excess he will have to pay on any insurance claim he makes. This will exacerbate extreme risk aversion.

Recommendations

1. Government should underwrite the excess on Fire Assessors, developers, and builders insurance policies so they adopt a proportionate approach to Fire Safety defect remediation.

2. Ensure Fire Safety Assessment is carried out taking all aspects of original fire safety design and how these features combined provide fire safety in each building, not just the materials in the cladding. 

3. Accept full scale fire safety tests for external cladding as a way of complying with adequacy of cladding even if component parts may not all be incombustible. This has always been accepted by BRE.

4. Clarify the validity of past Building Regs related to buildings constructed at the time. Compensate leaseholders where Government Building regs were inadequate.

5. Provide pragmatic guidance on Waking Watch. In our case, a building under 18m it would be ineffective, unnecessary and very costly for leaseholders. just a back covering exercise for Fire Assessors.

6. Government should take control and legislate not leave the problem to outside companies and firms who have no incentive to be proportionate. Government is the only entity that can enforce a sensible, fair way forward.

September 2021