Prompted by the Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC), the ministry of housing has written to local authorities to recommend not giving planning permission to tall residential buildings with only one set of stairs unless there are extenuating circumstances.
The fear is that if the stairs are blocked in the even of a fire, there is no other internal escape route.
BRAC chair Hywel Davies wrote to housing minister Lord Greenhalgh at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities in March setting out concerns over proposals for tall residential buildings with single staircases. He wrote that “such proposals are highly unlikely to be able to show compliance with the current Regulations. Nor do we think they are consistent with the arrangements that you are steering through parliament.”
Mr Davies wrote: “To address concerns that some still seek to interpret the regulations or statutory guidance or both to suit their purposes, BRAC recommends that you write to building control bodies, local authorities and the wider industry, reminding them that all building projects must show compliance with the full Building Regulations and stressing that the statutory guidance and the further guidance in the Manual to the Building Regulations (which was revised in 2020) is intended for common types of building. In your letter you may wish to say that you would not expect Approved Document B alone to justify single stair designs on tall buildings and that the relevant building control body should consider seeking (from those responsible for the building) relevant fire engineered solutions.”
Five months later, this letter has now been sent – signed by Victoria Molho, deputy director of the technical policy division in the Building Safety Portfolio.
She writes: "The Department... is concerned that some very tall residential buildings are being designed on the incorrect premise that the guidance in the Approved Document is suitable for these types of uncommon building situations without due consideration by the designers on the applicability of the guidance. I am writing to remind you of the need to consider the suitability of the design guidance in Approved Document B and the need for robust, evidence based, design by suitably competent professionals, particularly in relation to fire and structural safety issues of uncommon building situations such as very tall residential buildings proposed with a single stair.
"Building work must be designed and built to meet all relevant requirements of the Building Regulations. To comply with the Building Regulations, it is necessary both to follow the correct procedures and meet the functional requirements and to provide clear evidence of compliance with those requirements, such as detailed fire engineering analysis.”
- The full correspondence can be found at www.gov.uk
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