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Find out more17 August 2020
The Government has now published amendments to Approved Document B in England. There are three main changes/additions to the guidance.
Paragraph 7.4 of Approved Document B, Volume 1 has been amended to reduce the trigger height for sprinklers in a block of flats from 30m to 11m. This will apply where the height of the top floor to the lowest ground level outside the building is 11m or more.
In association with this change, Table B4 of Approved Document B, Volumes 1 and 2 (minimum periods of fire resistance) has been updated to include a new category for height of building ‘Up to 11m’.
Approved Document B, Volume 1 has been extended to include new paragraphs 15.13-15.16. These paragraphs provide guidance on signs to assist the fire service identify each floor and flat in the following locations:
Again, this applies where the height of the top floor of the block of flats to the lowest ground level outside the building is 11m or more. The guidance also confirms details of the minimum letter heights, wording, style and the positioning/legibility of the signs.
Approved Document B, Volume 1 (paragraph 11.5) and Volume 2 (paragraph 13.5) have been amended to include purpose group 2 (Residential – Institutional/Other) for application of a ‘notional boundary’ between two buildings on the same site. This is a correction to an error in the 2019 editions of the documents.
The amended Approved Documents come into force on 26 November 2020, however they will not apply where an initial notice has been given to, or a full plans deposited with, a local authority before 26 November 2020 and the building work to which it relates starts before 29 January 2021.
MHCLG have confirmed that the usual advice for commencement of work should be followed. In their opinion, commencement of work would usually be marked by work such as:
MHCLG considers that the following sorts of work would not be likely to constitute the commencement of work:
In some cases, applications will be in respect of several buildings on a site, for example a number of houses. In such cases it is the commencement of work on the first of the buildings within the application which determines whether all the building work can take advantage of the transitional provisions, not each individual building.
Read more detail in Technical Extra Issue 26 here.
For more information on the amendments and how these may affect your project please speak to your NHBC Surveyor or Project Manager.
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