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Unacceptable Solutions Episode 3: Are Things That Burn A Little Bit Ok?

At a safe cladding conference, I spoke at on the day of the Lacrosse court decision in February 2019 there was a panel debate about how much is too much combustible content in ACP. 

By that time the federal government had declined to put an outright ban on the importation of all combustible cladding because it would divert and dilute border force resources. And the state governments were beginning to put bans on 100 % PE but allow anything under 30 % PE content.

The Assistant Commissioner of Queensland Fire was on the panel and looked incredulously at the speaker and said– ‘We are not interested in things burning a little bit – you have to build things that don’t burn’. The senior fire officer from Victoria sitting next to me whispered his agreement and his deeply held concerns about 30 % PE products.  

Despite the assistant commissioners plea and the expert evidence to the Australian Building Codes Board in 2010, ACP with up to 30 % PE content is still available today and is in fact being used to reclad buildings that once had 100% PE content cladding. It begs the question – ‘Are we getting cladding wrong for the second time?’

The manufacturers of that product say it passes new standards of tests and there is no historical evidence of cladding fire spread where ACP with up to 30 % PE has been used. These statements can be taken at face value but need further investigations and history doesn’t always tell us everything we need to know about the future. 

What is apparent at the present is that the market is skittish about anything with any PE content at all. And it’s not just the recladding market that’s skittish, reputable fire engineers that just 12 - 18 months ago said 30 % PE was Ok have changed their minds and it’s not just because they’re afraid their professional indemnity insurance won’t cover them. This is a field where after decades of convenient inertia, things are moving very quickly.  

In the meantime, product manufacturers have been busy getting solid aluminum panels to the market that contain no PE, are thin enough to work with but thick enough to pass the furnace test and have the same appearance and colour pallets of the banned panels. So, the purchasing market has spoken, and the manufacturing market has responded, where’s the problem you might ask, that’s the way markets are supposed to behave? 

The problem now is one of confidence. Property owners in this sorry tale have been let down and done over by almost everyone in the property food chain, and now they don’t know who to trust. The federal government has refused to ban all combustible products, the state governments who gave us private certification of buildings as fit for occupation have retrospectively taken that away by banning anything over 30 % PE content. The state government then affirmed the acceptable use of 30 % PE and published fact sheets saying not all combustible cladding has to be removed but now the fire engineers and some local councils left to do the dirty work of enforcing compliance say it does. And that doesn’t take into account the position of the insurance companies that we will talk about another time.

The latest to add to this confusion is the recent formation in NSW of a panel of experts to determine what specifications should be set for a replacement product. and the announcement that owners should rush to choose replacement panels before they are ready to advise sometime next year. That might be the best they can do, but it’s not what their boss the state government is saying, and it is not consistent with the enforcement action of the state and local authorities.  

Meanwhile property owners are paralyzed. Corporates don’t know what to do any more than private citizens who panic at night when they hear a fire engine and worry how they will find the money in recessionary times to fund repairs when all they did was buy a home that was shiny and had a tick from the certifier outsourced by the government.  

Things that burn a little might be ok, they may not be, but in the absence of credible information people do nothing, and that’s not in anyone’s interests. Safe products with no PE should be given the green light so people can choose to make their buildings safe and restore value to their property.