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The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has been accused of a “conflict of interest” over its role chairing a Hackitt Review working group on building materials testing, while also carrying out fire safety tests of systems on the outside of buildings.
A spokesperson for Rockwool, a manufacturer of non-combustible insulation, said the BRE has a “commercial interest in defending the status quo” which “should disqualify it” from chairing the group because it carries out fire safety system tests.
The Hackitt Review into building regulations and fire safety has set up working groups looking into different aspects of building regulations.
The materials, products and system-testing working group is chaired by Debbie Smith, managing director of BRE Global. The working groups are holding their first meetings this week to start drawing up draft recommendations for changes to building safety for Dame Judith to consider.
The Rockwool spokesperson said: “The government should not allow a task so important for public safety to be directed by an organisation with such an obvious conflict of interest.”
But a spokesperson for Dame Judith said the chair’s role is to “facilitate” discussions, and questions being considered by the working groups have been set by Dame Judith, not the BRE.
Rockwool has argued that large-scale testing of materials on the outside of buildings should not be used for mid and high-rise buildings, or buildings such as schools and hospitals.
The Rockwool spokesperson said: “We should remember that these large-scale fire tests were developed to create a pathway for combustible materials to be approved as ‘safe’ for tall buildings.
“Large-scale testing has a role to play in some scenarios, though in our view, not when it comes to mid and high-rise or sensitive and high-occupancy buildings like schools and hospitals.”
The materials working group will consider how building material testing can be appropriate for the real-world use of materials, products and systems.
The Rockwool spokesperson said the group’s remit points to “little more than tweaking at the margins of the UK’s fundamentally flawed ‘test and study’ compliance regime” because it will not consider whether system testing “is even appropriate for tall and sensitive buildings”.
A spokesperson for the BRE said: "BRE’s role as chair of the Hackitt Review working group on materials, product and system testing is to facilitate an open and expert discussion with panel participants and enable them to express all their views and opinions and come to a consensus on the recommendations to be passed to Dame Judith Hackitt to consider in her final report.
"We are pleased to support this very important work.
"The first meeting took place this week - the meeting started with us asking all panel participants invited by the Hackitt Review Team from the construction products, testing and certification and fire safety sectors if they had any issue with BRE’s chairmanship; everyone responded positively and unanimously to BRE chairing the working group. This was witnessed and minuted by the review representatives."
Dame Judith’s spokesperson said: “Each working group has been tasked with examining questions set by Dame Judith. This question was not directed by BRE.
“The chair’s role in each group is to facilitate those discussions and feed the group’s collective view back to the review team.
“There are 10 representatives from a wide range of organisations included on this particular working group, and participants are free to discuss broader issues that they feel pertinent to responding to the direction of travel being considered by the group.”
Update: at 2.25pm, 22.02.18 This story has been updated to include a BRE statement that was supplied after the story was published.
Photo: Tom Pilston/Eyevine
Dame Judith Hackitt’s (above) interim report on building safety, released in December 2017, was scathing about some of the industry’s practices.
Although the full report is not due to be published until later this year, the former Health and Safety Executive chair has already highlighted a culture of cost-cutting and is likely to call for a radical overhaul of current regulations in an interim report.
Dame Hackitt’s key recommendations and conclusions include:
Inside Housing is calling for immediate action to implement the learning from the Lakanal House fire, and a commitment to act – without delay – on learning from the Grenfell Tower tragedy as it becomes available.
We will submit evidence from our research to the Grenfell public inquiry.
The inquiry should look at why opportunities to implement learning that could have prevented the fire were missed, in order to ensure similar opportunities are acted on in the future.