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The application of regulations for high rise buildings has been on the whole, good but there has been almost no scrutiny of medium rise buildings and this is where the scandal will truly get going.
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Good point. I think awareness of inherent risk is more intuitive in high rise. And possibly - with no facts at all to back this up - quality of construction and workmanship is also on the whole better because the developers and contractors are bigger and have better processes in place.
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The application of regulations for high rise buildings has been on the whole, good but there has been almost no scrutiny of medium rise buildings and this is where the scandal will truly get going.
Yes. Also lenders are flocking towards risk-aversion and pushing EWS1 wider and wider - and since it's (currently) a lender-controlled thing there's nothing to stop them asking for it and declining to lend without it. There are going to be some very tough times on the housing market because until something gets lenders in a position where medium rise is seen as low risk again, there's little incentive for them to enable the market. And the same goes for everyone else: no reason for an EWS1 assessor to do anything perceived as "taking a chance", no reason for a lender, no reason for an insurer, surveyor etc etc.
hoefla
Zumerzet
missing cavity barriers?
Retrofitting sprinklers has apparently got a lot cheaper too, but that's only from media, I don't know anyone who's done it.
The things is compartmentalisation works, on the whole. There are approx 2 high-rise fires a day (in the UK) that don't result in any deaths and you don't hear about and often even in the same block you're unaware of it. The conventional wisdom was that mass exodus carried a higher likelihood of injury and obstructing the fire service, so better to stay put and stay calm. There was also the thinking that reliance on sprinkler systems was risky because as an 'active' measure they could fail to function, so the fire prevention had to be 'built-in'.
All of that orthodoxy has now gone. No-one will stay put, for good reason.