How ‘joined up thinking’ is benefiting the industry
By Paul Smith, technical chair, The Rooflight Association.
As the trade association representing the UK’s rooflight industry, The Rooflight Association (RA) has existed in various guises (formerly NARM and ARM) since before the turn of the millennium. In its early days, one of the Association’s first actions was to commission research to resolve a perceived conflict in Part L of the Building Regulations with respect to recommendations for daylighting and solar gain for typical large-span industrial buildings.
The conclusions of this and the association’s subsequent research into daylight and energy efficiency, now form an important and evolving part of the data informing The Building Regulations in these respects.
These actions illustrate the continuing and over-riding purpose of the Rooflight Association: to ensure good practice across the construction sector, in the specification and installation of rooflighting systems and solutions.
Today’s Rooflight Association represents not only rooflight manufacturers. Its membership is open to contractors, installers, specifiers, distributors, consultants and other parties involved in rooflighting. Members are involved in all rooflight types and materials, including glass, polycarbonate and GRP.
This wider focus is helping to better address the association’s goals – recognising that effective roof lighting installations can only result from a ‘joined-up’ approach to the provision of natural daylight in buildings.
Taking this approach a stage further, over recent years The Rooflight Association has sought closer ties with other trade associations representing different aspects of the roofing sector. After all, a rooflight is a component of a wider roof structure, so shared understanding of performance and regulatory requirements should be paramount.
A recent example of the RA’s collaborative approach illustrates this point perfectly. Two days before the publication of the final Grenfell Report on 2 September 2024, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, (MHCLG), unaware of the negative consequences affecting the industrial building sector and particularly GRP rooflights, withdrew the BS476 series of national fire classifications, allowing only the EN13501 standard.
The BS 476 series are the standards that for many decades have been the established method of GRP rooflights demonstrating compliance with Approved Document B.
GRP rooflights are, in most cases, the only method of introducing natural daylight into metal or fibre cement clad industrial buildings, so swift and decisive action was required.
The situation was compounded by only allowing a six-month transition period for most parts of the Standards, particularly for internal reaction to fire, where existing translucent GRP technology could not demonstrate the necessary reaction to fire performance to EN13501-1 whilst maintaining the key attribute of a rooflight – light transmission.
The potential consequence would have been to outlaw the use of GRP rooflights despite industrial buildings and the position of GRP rooflights within them typically being low risk, and no evidence known to the RA of any situation where the performance of GRP rooflights has ever been shown to have worsened a fire situation.
Immediately, the RA pulled together a response team and garnered support from other trade associations – Bob Richardson, head of technical and training services at the NFRC (National Federation of Roofing Contractors), played a central role – culminating in a round of meetings with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to explain the potential crisis and the urgent need for action to provide certainty in the supply chain.
The Building Safety Regulator (BSR), together with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) were receptive to the response team’s desire to maintain the sustainability of large, shed construction types. Following months of productive and regular communication, a solution was reached, and it was confirmed that when tested to BS 2782-0, Method 508A, GRP that achieves a TP(a) rating can continue to be used as a rooflight material in industrial and storage buildings.