High pressure laminate cladding - data collection: summary report

1. Introduction

The Scottish Government has undertaken a data collection exercise to establish the extent of the use of external high pressure laminate (HPL) cladding across a number of building sectors in Scotland. This followed a UK Government commissioned test of a HPL cladding system that passed the large scale fire safety test (BS 8414 and BR135 classification). However it led to the UK Government's Independent Expert Advice Panel (IEAP) advising that other configurations of HPL cladding may not be suitable for high rise domestic buildings.

The HPL data collection undertaken by the Scottish Government was intended as an internal business data improvement exercise to assist and inform the work of the Scottish Government. It aimed to collect data on care homes, colleges of further education and universities, high-rise domestic buildings, hotels, independent schools, local authority schools, health buildings and prisons.

The different sectors include residential and non-residential buildings. The manner in which fire safety is managed differs between the different sectors and building types and this should be taken into account when building owners are assessing the risk and the impact of HPL cladding.