A National Regulator for Construction Products - There’s A New Sheriff in Town and he’s got a Retrospective Gun
Resulting from the horror of Grenfell and Dame Judith Hackitt’s subsequent review of building regulations, the UK Building Safety Bill 2022 has now received Royal Assent. (28th April 2022) The Building Safety Act 2022 will enshrine a Building Safety Regulator in law, who will provide oversight of the new system. They will have power of enforcement and sanction. The Building Safety Bill will create the authority to regulate construction products and create a statutory list of “safety critical” construction products where their failure would result in death or serious injury.
A separate regulator will also have powers to remove dangerous and non-certified products from the market. Last month the UK Government published a factsheet for this new National Regulator for Construction Products who will be established within the existing Office for Products and Safety Standards.
Not only will the new regulator maintain a national complaints hotline, they, will also lead and coordinate the enforcement of the strengthened construction products regulations, including removing products “that pose a safety risk from the market.” Powers will include entering, inspecting, and searching premises, requiring removal of products, and recovery of costs. Where a criminal offence has been committed under the new construction product regulations, “sanctions will include, fines, imprisonment or both.” Regulations will apply to any new product that a company wants to sell in the UK and to any existing products that a company continues to sell. Secondary legislation may take another 18 months, however the Government has also provisioned for retrospective action.
“Where a company previously sold a product that breached regulations, but no longer sells that product, the regulator may be able to act against the company for breaching the rules that were in place at the time of the offence”.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-safety-bill-factsheets/national-regulator-for-construction-products-factsheet
Obviously the new Regulator will sit across a broad range of life critical products. Our interest is fire rated barriers, and we suspect that given recent conversations we have had with contractors, fellow manufacturers, our internal marketing and industry sub contractors, there are potentially cases where fire shutters are still being installed into masonry, steel and timber stud structures without any legitimate CE marking paperwork, or incorrect paperwork. If you understand that 70 per cent of “tube motor” fire shutters in the UK are fitted into flexible stud structures, and you have a discussion with the very, few manufacturers who are compliant (and we think 2, maybe 3), the maths on unit manufacture nowhere near stack up. Unless we have our sums badly wrong, non-compliant products must be being installed. Likewise, masonry and steel fixing kits are potentially being used for timber stud structures - which if you have ever fire tested a shutter to BS EN 1634-1 is a catastrophic recipe for disaster. Manufacture and installation of fire shutters fall firmly within the remit of the new regulator as, they obviously fall under CPR 305/211 and are life safety products. The Door and Hardware Federation cite that “conforming to a hEN has legal consequences” and irrespective of BREXIT, hEN (Harmonised European Standards) apply. It follows that, fire shutter parameters must be set by an Extended Application (BS EN 15269-10) and no fire shutter can ever be installed into a flexible or timber stud structure if it does not have a separate fire test for such structures.
Compliant manufacturers will be able to demonstrate fire testing to multiple substrates within their Extended Applications.
Extract from A1S Group’s Extended Application to BSEN 15269-10 Evidencing Flexible AND Rigid Testing
The regulatory direction of travel for life critical products in the UK is clear, and the national complaints hotline will quickly and efficiently help expose breaches across the entire range of life safety construction products. Certainly, manufacturers and installers of life safety products will be under the microscope. Ignorance of CE marking and Construction Product Regulations will never be a defence, nor will obfuscation or confusion over any fixing structures and certification requirements under harmonised European Standards. Fines and retrospective costs could be crippling.
To reiterate, as a company, the A1S Group is accredited to manufacture fire shutters for BOTH flexible (timber stud) AND rigid (masonry and steel) structures. It is not our role to police manufacturer’s certification within our industry, but we are glad that there is a new sheriff in town.
For a simplified guide on the mandatory legislation and required certification from November 2019, please see: https://a1sgroup.com/blog/a1s-group-policy-when-quoting-ce-marked-fire-shutters
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