The forthcoming Building Safety Bill makes clear the differentiation for 18m+ / 7 storey+ from other properties. The material (fire) classifications have already been adjusted in the Building Regulations and associated Approved Documents to suit the needs of greater protection in tall constructions.

You would have thought LFB would be happy to see less high rise and high risk being planned/constructed.

IMHO it is not so much taking steps to avoid the rules rather adjusting the product to fit within those rules.

Dieselgate was/is an example of taking steps to avoid the rules.

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

this piece on the BBC website shows builders taking steps to avoid new properties being subject to stricter post-Grenfell fire related building controls.  You do wonder about the mental processes that leads people to the conclusion that life  is  a game and  you should do whatever it takes to win.

I completely disagree with that article.

If you apply a conventional hierarchy of controls, the builders in this case have eliminated the hazard by not building a high-rise, which surely has to be better than controlling the hazard by implementing things like more complex fire alarms.

If the author thinks that lower buildings than 18m high should also have enhanced fire measures, that's a different argument.  However, having decided the rules and written the rules and published the rules, you can't rationally lambast someone for complying with the rules.

I recall an inspector in the COMAH sector saying that intentionally limiting your chemical inventory to just below the COMAH thresholds to avoid application of the onerous COMAH rules was absolutely fine by them as the outcome was that hazards were reduced, which was exactly what was wanted.

This is analogous to building a less tall building in order to avoid the onerous rules for tall buildings.

Well, in the BBC article there is a link to a comment by the Building Safety Minister.

If he/Government think that a risk-based approach is appropriate then they can legislate for that, rather than incorporating somewhat arbitrary thresholds.

Some years ago, moves were happening to amend the requirements of the Reservoirs Safety Act 1930 whose main provisions only came into play if the capacity of a reservoir exceeded 25000 cubic metres, to move from this hazard-based legislation to a risk-based approach.

So, in essence you look at the infrastructure and what is downstream to see the impact of failure (as well as the probability of failure). I have worked on a project involving a mega reservoir where there is virtually nothing downstream for miles. In contrast I have worked on projects where they were reducing the capacity of reservoirs to below the magic number without considering the population downstream and only for the reservoirs to come back into scope when the law changed.