Hans Mitchell

The recent description of the ‘glacial pace’ of Scotland’s combustible cladding remediation strategy counterbalances the increasingly heated debate around fire safety across the country. The reality for tens of thousands of people is that eight years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster, they currently reside in buildings with potentially dangerous cladding and no sign of work starting to resolve the problem.

In August, the Scottish Government announced it had made ‘significant and measurable progress’ in launching and scaling up its National Cladding Remediation Programme. The centrepiece of this initiative was an open call for local authorities and Registered Social Landlords (RSL) to apply for fully funded Single Building Assessments (SBAs).

We’ll come back to the SBA shortly, but by the end of June, 600 Expressions of Interest (EoI) for a funded SBA had been received, and in the latest September figures, this number has risen sharply to 1,062 EoIs. Initial grant funding awards have also risen from 258 at the end of July to 478 by September. The Scottish Government estimates that between 1,260 and 1,450 buildings above 11m in height may need remedial work relating to combustible cladding.

So what is an SBA? It’s designed as a standardised and comprehensive assessment detailing the life safety risk profile of an individual building inside and out, with a key focus on the external façade. The SBA regime is prioritised towards higher risk residential buildings over 11m in height with potential cladding issues. The SBA is used to inform a robust remediation plan, which can include cladding removal or other appropriate mitigation measures. Once this work has concluded, a post-work assessment of conformity is granted, so the building can be entered onto the Cladding Assurance Register (CAR) to reflect its accredited fire safety performance.

Following an earlier pilot, the Scottish Government has recently announced a 100% increase to the SBA funding pot, which now stands at £20 million. The demand is certainly there through the expressions of interest exercise, so this would certainly rank as the measurable progress reported in the August government update.

So why the downbeat ‘glacial’ assessment recently voiced in Holyrood? Well, we need to return to the numbers and specifically the outputs of the process, which here we’ll measure as buildings that have had unsafe cladding removed. Depending on which source we use, under this particular scheme, this is either one building or potentially two buildings. It’s important to note that these figures do not include those organisations making a unilateral decision to self-remediate their assets.

But eight years on from Grenfell and under the government’s National Cladding Remediation Programme, potentially two buildings in Scotland have had dangerous cladding removed. For comparison, 1,637 buildings in England, under its version of this programme, have had their dangerous cladding removed.

There are various factors in play to account for such a large disparity, but ignoring this historical performance, we need to understand how Scotland can dramatically accelerate its cladding remediation action plan today. Unfortunately, a fundamental problem lies at the very heart of the solution designed by the Scottish Government.

Since the Grenfell tragedy, the issue of professional competence has been widely debated, especially within the life safety arena. The Scottish government’s response has been clear on the expected qualifications and competencies of those responsible for the design and specification of buildings, as well as the role of appropriately qualified fire engineers in preparing and approving the SBA. The final report must be signed off by a chartered safety professional, and any external cladding elements in the assessment must also be peer reviewed by an additional chartered safety professional, with specific expertise in Fire Risk Assessment of External Walls (FRAEW).

In the whole of the UK, it is estimated that there are currently 219 active chartered fire safety engineers. Out of this total, the number with specific expertise and qualifications to assess FRAEW is significantly smaller, with some believing this could be less than 20 individuals. Given the scale of the demand for chartered fire engineers in England alone, which could have 9,000 residential buildings with unsafe cladding, a Scottish system dependant on the oversight of two different chartered engineers has a clear point of failure.

The capacity and skills challenge are laid bare in the SBA figures. Currently under the new June 2024 SBA specification, latest data from the September report indicates 16 SBAs have been completed. All 16 assessments identified that remedial work was required on these buildings. At the end of September, the Scottish Government Cladding Remediation Programme reported that it was not aware of any other SBAs that were yet underway but had not been completed. There is now allocated grant funding for 478 more SBAs to be carried out. The real issue today is not access to funding, although Scottish government estimates indicate that resolving the cladding crisis could cost between £1.7bn to £3.1bn, but it’s one of access to appropriately qualified fire safety experts.

It’s laudable that the Scottish government has committed to working with the UK government on the professionalisation of fire engineers by increasing the number of places on high-quality degree courses in fire engineering, but the impact of this collaboration won’t be seen on the ground for many years. To avoid a bottleneck at the SBA stage, the Scottish government must be prepared to act pragmatically on streamlining its assessment process, while retaining a core focus on competent investigation.

We must not forget that delays and inefficiencies at the building assessment stage, have a real-world knock-on effect with the procurement and delivery of remediation programmes. Uncertainty and delay increases costs and programme durations, impacts the commercial viability of specialist contractors and places residents in an invidious risk position for unacceptable periods of time.

The real proof of progress for the National Cladding Remediation Programme is how quickly many more residents can feel safe in their homes. The skills and resourcing challenge is a major obstacle, so it’s incumbent on all parties to urgently come together and develop a solution that accelerates progress, without diminishing safety standards. This is not something we can kick into the long grass, but a situation with profound safety implications for Scottish residents today, as the demand for SBAs rises, but without the resourcing structure to move forward effectively into positive action.

• Hans Mitchell is client relations director at Harmony Fire