The Government consulted on its proposals to implement this recommendation in its Fire Safety Consultation (carried out in 2020). The Government responded to the consultation in 2021 (link).

The Fire Safety Act (FSA) clarified the scope of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (Fire Safety Order) as including the external walls (including cladding and balconies) and flat entrance doors for premises containing two or more sets of domestic premises. The Government commenced the Act in full on 16 May 2022.

The FSA removes any legal ambiguity and requires responsible persons to update Fire Risk Assessments to take account of external walls and flat entrance doors. Alongside the Act, the Government launched the Fire Risk Assessment Prioritisation Tool (FRAPT), an online tool to help responsible persons identify which buildings should have their fire risk assessments updated first.

Commencement of the FSA also allowed the Government to lay The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 on 18 May 2022. These regulations, made under Article 24 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, implement this recommendation and came into force on 23 January 2023.

Under the Regulations, the responsible person of a high-rise residential building must prepare a record of the design of the external walls of the building including the materials from which the walls are constructed. The Regulations also require the record to contain details of the level of risk which has been identified by the fire risk assessment and the mitigations have been taken in relation to that risk. The responsible person must send this record electronically to their local fire and rescue service. A template will be provided to assist the responsible person in preparing this record.

The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) report that to fully address recommendation 33.10b, fire and rescue services should review all training products to ensure that the hazards associated with external wall system failures are identified, including those related to Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding, are covered, and then carry out training and assessment of all staff on how to identify control measures to respond to the hazard of fire spread in external wall systems.

In October 2023, the NFCC surveyed all fire and rescue services (with the exception of the LFB) in England about their progress against this recommendation:

93% of services (40 services) have completed this recommendation and have trained all relevant staff using NFCC products. This includes updated NFCC guidance and a suite of building information sheets to help services embed the lessons associated with fire spread on external walls of high-rise buildings. This represents a 2% increase from the previous NFCC survey completed in March 2023.

All services have reviewed their training.

The NFCC has produced a number of guidance documents and training materials to support services. These cover: 

• High rise residential buildings and building failures
• Impact of fire or firefighting on structural elements or structural frames
• Impact of fire or firefighting on structural materials
• Partial or structural collapse: Fires in buildings
• External fire spread
• Undetected fire spread
• Fire spread breaching a compartment
• Fires in buildings greater than 18m

The LFB has reported that it has completed recommendation 33.10b. All of the Brigade’s operational and control staff have received training to recognise and understand the risks involved in fires taking hold in the external walls of high-rise buildings and how such risks may be mitigated to enhance the safety of the public and firefighters.