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FIA portal for EWS-1 forms goes live

ews-1 forms

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Valuation and home survey processes were previously insufficient to establish whether or not external cladding on high rise buildings [over 18 m height] contained combustible material and therefore would facilitate the spread of fire.

Following the Grenfell tragedy and subsequent MHCLG [Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] guidance, RICS [Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors] along with UKF [UK Finance] and BSA [Building Societies Association] developed so-called EWS-1 forms as a means of enabling competent fire experts to assess whether these buildings are fire safe and if not, to identify that remedial work needs to be carried out.

ews-1 forms

The provision of EWS-1 forms has proved successful in creating a clear and consistent means by which the market understands the documentation required to support the buying, selling or re-mortgaging of properties in high rise buildings.

While the EWS-1 form has been downloaded from the RICS web site over 8,000 times, there remain some key issues to be resolved in order to create a fully reliable and accessible process for the upload and retrieval of these forms.

The FIA has stepped in to meet this requirement. In consultation with MHCLG and in collaboration with RICS and other stakeholders including lenders and insurers, it has developed a unique portal which now provides a central readily-accessible location for EWS-1 forms and, for the first time, the ability for signatories to complete the forms online.   

Fraudulent EWS-1 forms

This meets an increasingly urgent need for property sellers and buyers, insurers and mortgage lenders to easily access for free and in one specific location the information they need in order for transactions involving properties in high rise buildings to proceed as normal post-Grenfell as well as identifying any remedial actions that must be taken on these buildings in respect of external cladding.

Of especial importance is the need to prevent fraudulent activity relating to EWS-1 forms which regrettably has been identified in the market and which can place lives at risk.

A rigorous approach has been applied to the portal to include manual checks at various stages of the process. Each signatory wishing to submit forms must present evidence that they are fully qualified and competent to do so and this is interrogated prior to enabling their forms to be submitted to the portal.

In addition, all existing forms and on-line submissions are subject to further checks to determine their validity before they appear as publicly-available documents. In this way, we would expect to minimise the problem of fraudulent EWS-1 forms appearing in the market.

The FIA has fully-funded this portal and has employed software specialists to create an effective, efficient and user-friendly site that has been approved by the RICS Forum.

The portal is now active and enables signatories to EWS-1 forms to register to submit these forms. Within a few days as initial registrations are checked and approved, signatories will be able to submit EWS-1 forms and these will shortly appear on the portal again once these are checked and approved. Forms that are uploaded will then be available for viewing and download free of charge.

The FIA is the largest fire protection trade association in Europe with over 900 members, a not-for-profit organisation that is a major provider of fire safety training.

Its objective is to promote, improve and perfect fire protection methods, devices, services and apparatus and achieves this through the representation of its members and providing technical support, guidance and opportunities for professional advancement through education and appropriate regulation.

It promotes and shapes legislation and the professional standards of the fire industry through close liaison with government and official bodies as well as other key stakeholders and also provides funding for research projects in line with its principal objectives.

For further details about the FIA, visit the web site at www.fia.uk.com

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