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In the latest of the endlessly ill-informed coverage of flammable cladding on tower blocks being replaced, Scotland’s Insider has:
Only two of the 105 buildings included in the Scottish Government’s cladding remediation programme have had work carried out.
With a Holyrood committee scrutinising new legislation aimed at dealing with potentially flammable cladding on blocks of flats, MSPs said that “progress has been slow”.
A report published by the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee said: “Of the 105 buildings within the Scottish Government’s cladding remediation programme, only one has yet had any remediation works carried out, and only one has had mitigation works.”
In contrast, it said that as of December 2023, in England more than two fifths of buildings (42%) had had work either started or completed, with 1,608 buildings included in this total.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/cladding-report-finds-only-two-32238512
Before I get, once more, to why this does not matter at all in Scotland, note 105 buildings identified in Scotland and 1 608 making up only two fifths, so in total more than 4 000 in England? Pro rata, you’d expect only 1 000 in England, so 4 times more ‘needing’ the work?
Back to the main point, regulars move on:
From BBC Glasgow & West [25/9/22]:
Firefighters have extinguished a blaze which broke out at a tower block in the south side of Glasgow.
Emergency services were alerted to the incident in Shawhill Road, Shawlands, at about 21:00 on Saturday.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service dispatched eight fire engines. Large plumes of smoke were seen coming from windows on the block’s upper floors.
The fire was reported as extinguished after 22:00. It is understood there were no reported casualties.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-63023916
Why did this fire not spread to other floors and with terrible consequences?
Simple: Cavity Fire Barriers.
What?
These:
Reader Gordon Darge wrote for us in January 2020:
As a chartered architect in Scotland for 40 years I can confirm that the Building Regulations Technical Standards Scotland have for two decades required cavity fire barriers
2.4 Cavities
Mandatory Standard
Standard 2.4
Every building must be designed and constructed in such a way that in the event of an outbreak of fire within the building, the spread of fire and smoke within cavities in its structure and fabric is inhibited.
This includes for example, around the head, jambs and sill of an external door or window opening, at all floor levels and building corners etc. to prevent the spread of fire in building cavities. This would have prevented the spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower.
This is difficult and expensive to achieve and I can only guess that in England they did not follow the Scottish model because Westminster and the Tories were led by the vested interests of big business, property developers and large construction firms.
For anyone wanting more info see:
Cavity fire barriers prevent this:
The Chimney Effect
As I understand it, it is not so much the flammability of the material used as the construction of the external cladding to deny the spread of fire via a chimney effect.
They worked in tower block fire in 2021:
a fire in 2021 which was contained within one floor and had no casualties:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-58046347According to BBC Scotland:
Residents of a multi-storey block of flats in Glasgow had to be evacuated after a fire broke out on the 17th floor. Fire crews were called to the block on Lincoln Avenue in the Knightswood area of the city at 04:08. Residents were safely removed from the building by the fire service and there were no casualties. A total of nine fire appliances attended the incident which took about five hours to bring under full control. A spokeswoman for Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: “Operations control mobilised nine appliances to Lincoln Avenue where the fire was affecting the 17th floor of the multi-storey block of flats.” The spokeswoman said residents from the 17th and 18th floors were removed and the fire has been extinguished.
No towering inferno. Never!
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The Scottish media and ( sadly ) some Scottish MSPs clearly don’t want to know how Fire Regulations differ between Scotland and England . Hence the scaremongering over ”cladding ” .
I venture to suggest that had the positions vis-a-vis Fire Regulations been reversed the media frothing would have concentrated on WHY the Scots have inferior protection on buildings compare to England .
It’s called ” Heads I win , tails you lose ! ”
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Sorry O/T It just shows what Tories really think of Scotland,when Sunac asked about helping Grangemouth just waffle but as the below link shows just 2 fingers to Scotland.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/uk-600m-backing-jim-ratcliffe-carbon-bomb-petrochemical-plant
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I was in charge of safety for a Scottish University that had a campus in London. We had to carry out fire risk assessments for all of our campuses. It was a legal requirement and had to be partly based on the Technical Standards in force at each campus.
The English Standards were sufficiently different from the Scottish ones, that we employed a local, English, risk assessor to carry out the assessment for London, rather than carry it out ourselves. My team were very experienced in the requirements of the Scottish Standards but had never had to work with the Scottish ones.
I remember it being pointed to me out at that time that some of the requirements in the Scottish Technical Standards were more rigorous than those in the English ones. And that there were things permitted in England that would never be tolerated in Scotland.
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