PERTHCombustible cladding: is it on the building you're buying into?
Combustible cladding on WA apartments: what the BCA requires, the state-wide audit that referred 52 buildings for building orders, AS 5113
After the Grenfell Tower fire in London, one question echoed through every apartment market in the country: is the cladding on this building the kind that helped a fire climb it in minutes? Western Australia audited its buildings to find out, and if you are buying an apartment, the answer matters to you.
What the problem is
The cladding at issue is certain aluminium composite panels, a metal skin over a core, where the core is combustible. Used on the outside of a tall building, a combustible core can let fire spread rapidly up the facade, outrunning the building's internal fire protection. It was identified as a factor in the rapid fire spread at Grenfell, and in earlier fires in Australia.
Building and Energy issued Industry Bulletin 54 to alert the WA industry to the importance of external cladding meeting the fire performance requirements of the Building Code of Australia, and Industry Bulletin 62 carried the findings of the Victorian audit that first put the issue on the national agenda.
What the BCA requires
Western Australian building law requires compliance with the Building Code of Australia, which includes fire safety. In general, the BCA requires external walls of Type A and Type B construction buildings, typically the medium-rise and high-rise buildings that include residential apartment blocks, to be non-combustible. In March 2018 the BCA was updated to remove any ambiguity about combustible cladding: any combustible cladding proposed for those buildings has to demonstrate it passed the large-scale fire test under Australian Standard AS 5113, or receive the Building Commissioner's approval.
The WA audit, and what it found
Building and Energy completed a state-wide cladding audit of high-risk buildings. It resulted in 52 buildings with combustible cladding being referred to their local government permit authority for enforcement, including the issuing of building orders under the Building Act 2011. Each owner issued a building order is required to engage a fire engineer and remediate the cladding, and remediation has since been completed on the majority of affected buildings.
The regulator has deliberately not published the list of individual buildings, both because the Building Commissioner is bound by confidentiality and because naming buildings with cladding still in place could invite arson. So there is no public register you can simply search — which makes the disclosure obligation below the practical route to an answer.
Why this matters to a buyer — it is a material fact
Consumer Protection's position is clear: the existence of combustible cladding on a building is a material fact that must be disclosed to prospective purchasers and tenants, along with the associated risks and any remediation ordered. Under the Real Estate and Business Agents Code of Conduct, an agent must make reasonable efforts to ascertain and disclose material facts before you sign.
So the questions to ask before buying an apartment are direct. Does this building have external cladding, and has it been confirmed as compliant with the BCA? Was this building subject to the cladding audit, and if so, was a building order issued? If remediation was ordered, has it been completed, and is there documentation? Ask the agent, ask the strata company, and get the answer in writing.
Where an inspection fits
Identifying whether a specific panel product is combustible is a fire engineer's determination, not a building inspector's, and we say that plainly rather than imply otherwise. What an apartment inspection does is inspect the lot you are buying and flag the questions the strata records and the agent need to answer, including cladding where the building's age and construction make it relevant. On strata property, remediation is a shared cost, which is exactly why the strata company's minutes and the audit status belong on your checklist before the finance clause runs down.
How a cladding fire actually spreads
To understand why combustible cladding became such a serious issue, picture how a fire behaves on a building wrapped in it. The dangerous product at the centre of the problem is a type of aluminium composite panel with a polyethylene core, a thin skin of aluminium bonded to a plastic filling. On the wall it looks like solid metal, but the plastic core is combustible, and once a fire reaches it, the cladding can carry flame rapidly up the face of the building, from one storey to many in minutes, outrunning the ability of both occupants and firefighters to respond. The cladding turns what should be a contained fire in one part of a building into a fire that races up the exterior and spreads between floors and units by a path the building was never supposed to have.
This is why it is treated so seriously rather than as an ordinary defect. A building's fire strategy relies on containing a fire long enough for people to get out and for the fire service to act, and combustible cladding defeats that by providing an express route for the fire to spread. The high-profile overseas tragedies that brought the issue to global attention were exactly this: fires that should have been survivable made catastrophic by cladding that carried the flames up the outside of the building. The response, here and internationally, has been to identify affected buildings and require the risk to be managed or removed.
What the WA response has involved
Western Australia, like other jurisdictions, undertook a program to identify buildings with potentially combustible cladding and to assess the risk they posed. That process worked through the building stock, particularly the mid and high-rise residential buildings where the product was used, assessing which buildings carried the material, in what quantity and configuration, and what level of risk that represented. Some buildings were found to need remediation, the removal and replacement of the combustible cladding with a compliant, non-combustible alternative, which is a major and expensive undertaking.
For an apartment owner or buyer, the existence of this process is significant because it means there may be a documented history for a given building: whether it was assessed, what was found, and whether remediation was required, is underway, or has been completed. A building that has been through remediation is in a very different position from one that has been identified as affected but not yet remediated, where the cost of the work is still to come and will fall on the owners. This is exactly the kind of information that lives in the strata records and the building's history rather than in the condition of any individual apartment.
Why it is a material fact for a buyer
Combustible cladding is not a cosmetic or minor issue; it is a material fact that goes to both the safety of the building and its cost of ownership, and it is one of the clearest cases where the risk in an apartment purchase sits entirely outside the apartment itself. A sound, attractive apartment in a building with unremediated combustible cladding carries two things the apartment's condition cannot show: a genuine fire-safety concern, and a potential remediation cost that, shared among the owners according to unit entitlement, can be very large. A special levy to fund cladding remediation is one of the most significant liabilities a strata scheme can carry, and it attaches to whoever owns the lot when it falls due.
This is why, for any apartment in a mid or high-rise building of the relevant era, the cladding question is one to ask directly and to answer through the building's records and history rather than through the inspection of the lot. Has the building been assessed for combustible cladding? What was found? If remediation was required, has it been done, is it funded, or is it a cost still to come? An inspection of the apartment tells you about the apartment; it cannot tell you whether the building you are buying into is wrapped in a material that a fire could carry up its face, or whether a five or six figure remediation levy is in your future. That question is answered in the paperwork, and for an apartment of the relevant type, it is one of the most important questions a buyer can ask.
Common questions
Is combustible cladding disclosed when buying an apartment?
Consumer Protection's position is that combustible cladding is a material fact that must be disclosed to prospective purchasers and tenants, along with the risks and any remediation ordered.
What did the WA cladding audit find?
The state-wide audit referred 52 buildings with combustible cladding to local governments for enforcement, including building orders requiring owners to engage a fire engineer and remediate.
What standard applies to combustible cladding?
Since March 2018 the BCA requires combustible cladding on medium and high-rise buildings to have passed the large-scale fire test under AS 5113, or to have the Building Commissioner's approval.
This comes up on every apartment & strata inspection and pre-purchase building inspection we carry out.
Read next: wet areas are the most commonly failed part of a new build and concrete spalling: when the steel inside rusts.
Sources
Read rather than recalled. Summarised here; the documents themselves are Crown copyright and are linked rather than reproduced.