Ms Claire McManus:

I invite Mr. Kirwan to jump in as timber frame buildings are not my area of expertise. On Part B and high rise, the history, as I understand, is that when the Grenfell tragedy happened, a circular was issued due to obvious concerns. That meant that the standards people were following went from a 2016 British standard back to a 1990 standard. They have been playing catch-up ever since. For example, of the apartment buildings we were working on, none complied in terms of fire escapes, how close the fire tender or fire brigade needed to be to the building and how many sides it had to access. There were planning permissions that did not comply with Part B. A building control officer in one local authority would give one answer and another in a different local authority would give a different answer. There was a scramble that has been extremely difficult and complex to resolve. It is getting there but it was a very particular set of circumstances.

The cladding used in Grenfell is not really applied here. That was a huge tragedy so I would not criticise anyone for reacting to it but we are now playing catch-up. It was a very particular set of circumstances that led to that tragedy and there will obvious be a Part B but people are very slow to innovate in the area of fire. It is the one area where, as a designer or practitioner, one can get a criminal prosecution and a criminal record so it is taken very seriously and people are very nervous about it. Ultimately, it was a unique set of circumstances that has led to the challenge we face now. Perhaps it is difficult to be brave in this area.