CIC responds to Dame Judith Hackitt’s Independent Review

CIC responded to Dame Judith Hackitt’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety. CIC’s submission was developed following two workshops, involving 50 or so experts from the wide breadth of CIC’s membership.

Members include professional bodies whose own members work across the built environment, from client organisations, through planning, geotechnical, design, surveying, engineering; to construction, project management, cost control, building control, site supervision; and on to facilities management and maintenance of a facility through its lifetime.

CIC’s members cover all these activities in relation to buildings, infrastructure and the managed natural environment. This make CIC uniquely placed to provide an holistic overview of issues, taking into account the full range of expertise in the built environment.

Within the response, CIC highlighted four particular key areas of consensus agreement:

(1) that there needs to be a thorough overhaul of the guidance that underpins the building regulations;

(2) that there needs to be a consolidation of all legislation that pertains to building regulations and fire safety;

(3) that a differentiation in the regulatory regime needs to be developed for higher-risk buildings (certainly to include buildings over 18m high in which people live); and

(4) that there needs to be a National Register for Fire Safety to include agreed industry-wide standards for the accreditation of fire safety consultants and fire risk assessors (I am pleased to say that under the auspices of the DCLG Industry Response Group, CIC is already working to develop such a register, involving all the key industry and fire organisations).

A copy of the submission can be viewed here.