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Hackitt would support combustibles ban, despite not calling for one in review
Dame Judith Hackitt has said she would support a ban on combustible cladding if announced by government, despite not calling for such a ban in her final report on building regulations and fire safety.
The Local Government Association, the Royal Institute of British Architects, Grenfell survivors and many fire safety experts all called for ban on using combustible material on tower blocks. Despite this lobbying push, Dame Judith said she would not call for a ban.
However, speaking in a press briefing on the report this morning, Dame Judith said if housing secretary James Brokenshire announced a ban on combustible cladding she would support it.
In response to a question from a journalist outlining that scenario she said: “If he were to say that, I would be supportive, yes.”
After further questioning from members of the press on not calling for a combustible cladding ban. Dame Judith said: “If people feel that I have not gone far enough, and that for this system to work in the future requires, in addition, that there is further clarity or indeed banning of some of the materials that are being used, I don’t have a problem with that.
"What I would be very disappointed about, however, is if people think that simply banning cladding is going to fix this problem, it won’t. It is a broken system and banning cladding on its own will not fix it. If we change the system and implement the new regulatory framework, and take further steps on what cladding is or is not allowed, I don’t have a problem with that at all.”
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Dame Judith insisted the current building regulation guidance is “too prescriptive”. She said: “I think part of the problem with the current system is there is too much prescription. By putting too many descriptors and too much specification in the current guidance it encourages that lack of ownership and responsibility in the industry. What I’ve seen is a real tendency for people to say ‘I’ll do what the guidance requires, and in some cases if the guidance doesn’t tell me I can’t do it, I’ll do it anyway’. So we’ve got to get to a system where industry takes responsibility.”
When Inside Housing put it to Dame Judith that construction professionals have said the guidance is not prescriptive enough and allows too much interpretation, she replied: “[There is] this practice of writing guidance in a number of different silos, if you try to read across them it’s almost impossible and it contains contradictory statements. It’s that ability to use selective information from one section and not read across to others, and not to put fire safety front and centre of the process that is part of the problem with the current guidance system.”
She added: “The guidance needs to be structured so it’s not so prescriptive, but also clear and non-contradictory.”
