Exterior Cladding near you

The ban on combustible materials in external walls was inserted by the Building (Amendment) Regulations 2018 in England, in force from 21 December 2018, and by the Building (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2019 in Wales, in force from 13 January 2020. Both added paragraphs (2) to (4) to regulation 7 and both set the trigger at a storey at least 18 metres above ground level, measured from the lowest ground level adjoining the outside of the building to the top of the floor surface of the storey, in a building containing dwellings, an institution or a room for residential purposes. Roof-top plant areas and storeys consisting exclusively of plant rooms are excluded from the height test.

The England regulation was then changed on 1 December 2022. Regulation 7(2) was substituted, regulation 7(1A) was inserted to ban relevant metal composite material in any building of any height, and the words that had excluded rooms in a hostel, hotel or boarding house from the definition of a relevant building were removed — so those buildings are now inside the ban. The same amendment added fibre optic cables and certain solar shading components to the list of exempt items, extended the below-ground insulation exemption to 300 millimetres above ground level, and dealt with balcony floor layers. Wales made the equivalent changes on 20 December 2025 through its own 2025 regulations, and its version of regulation 7(2) names the classification standard BS EN 13501-1:2018 expressly.

Regulation 7(3) lists what paragraph (2) does not apply to, and the list is long and specific: cavity trays used between two leaves of masonry, any part of a roof connected to an external wall other than the part caught by regulation 2(6)(iv), door frames and doors, electrical installations, fibre optic cables, insulation and waterproofing below ground or up to 300 millimetres above it, intumescent and fire-stopping materials needed for Part B, membranes, seals, gaskets, fixings, sealants and backer rods, solar shading components other than the curtain or slats themselves, thermal break materials needed for Part L thermal bridging, window frames and glass, and the top horizontal floor layer of a balcony of Classification A1fl or A2fl-s1 over an imperforate substrate.

Below 18 metres, the guidance rather than the prohibition governs, and in England that guidance is Table 10.1 of Approved Document B Volume 1. For buildings in the residential purpose groups, the table requires the external surface — the outermost external material — to be Class A2-s1, d0 or better where the building is more than 11 metres in height, whatever its distance from the boundary. At 11 metres or less, it requires Class B-s3, d2 or better where the wall is less than 1000 millimetres from the relevant boundary, and specifies no provisions where the wall is 1000 millimetres or more from it.

The notes matter as much as the table. Profiled or flat steel sheet at least 0.5 millimetres thick with an organic coating no more than 0.2 millimetres thick is also acceptable, and timber cladding at least 9 millimetres thick is also acceptable — which is how ordinary weatherboarding is used close to a boundary on a normal house. The table applies to each wall individually according to its own proximity to the relevant boundary, so one elevation can be constrained and another not. Paragraph 10.4 adds a general instruction that applies to buildings of any height or use: consideration should be given to the choice of materials, including their extent and arrangement, used for the external wall or attachments to it, to reduce the risk of fire spread over the wall.

So, for a two-storey house: the combustible materials ban does not reach it, the metal composite material prohibition does, and whether a timber or composite cladding is constrained depends chiefly on how close that wall is to the boundary. If you live in a flat rather than a house, none of this is a personal renovation question — the external wall belongs to the building, and other guides on this site deal with what that means.

Scotland did not follow the 18 metre line. From 1 June 2022 the Scottish building standards technical handbooks were revised, with regulation 8 of the building regulations amended to prohibit highly combustible metal composite material panels in an external wall cladding system or as an internal lining, and to ban combustible materials in external wall cladding systems on dwellings and on other defined relevant buildings with a storey at a height of 11 metres or more. The Scottish Government's own explanation of the threshold is that the 11 metre storey height is based on the reach capability of a fire and rescue service ground-mounted water jet where there is sufficient pressure and flow in the water main.

The Scottish changes also removed the option of demonstrating compliance by fire test for domestic and other high-risk buildings above 11 metres, prohibiting the materials outright, and applied the new standards to replacement cladding as well as to new work. The 2022 handbooks apply to building warrants submitted on or after 1 June 2022, and in Scotland the approval itself is a building warrant from the council's building standards department rather than a building regulations application.

Northern Ireland works to its own building regulations and technical booklets, with Booklet E covering fire safety, so neither the England Approved Document nor the Scottish handbook is the document to check there. The practical rule for anyone with a building near any of these thresholds is to establish which nation's regime applies and what the storey height actually measures to, before choosing a material.

A clad wall is a two-stage defence, not a waterproof skin. Approved Document C sets it out directly: any framed external wall will meet the requirement if the cladding is separated from the insulation or sheathing by a vented and drained cavity with a membrane that is vapour open but resists the passage of liquid water on the inside of the cavity. It adds that cladding can work either by holding precipitation at the face of the building or by stopping it penetrating beyond the back of the cladding, and that dry joints between cladding units should be designed so that precipitation will not pass through them, or the cladding designed so that anything entering the joints is directed back towards the exposed face.

For timber and board cladding there is a further instruction. Where cladding is supported by timber components, or is on the facade of a timber framed building, the space between the cladding and the building should be ventilated to ensure rapid drying of any water that penetrates the cladding. That is the battens and counter-battens on the quotation, and a system fixed tight to the wall to save depth has removed the mechanism the guidance relies on.

The rest is edges. Approved Document C asks for particular care with detailing and workmanship at the junctions between cladding and window and door openings, which it describes as vulnerable to moisture ingress, and requires each sheet, tile and section of cladding to be securely fixed. It also says something worth quoting to anyone selling a coating as a cladding: the weather-resisting part of a cladding system does not include paint, nor any coating, surfacing or rendering that will not itself provide all the weather resistance.

Cladding is priced on the wall as much as on the material. What moves the figure is what the existing wall is made of and what has to be done to it first, the material and finish chosen, whether insulation is going behind the cladding and to what thickness, the number of openings, corners, reveals and penetrations to be detailed, the cavity and batten build-up, the height and the access arrangements, and whether the position of the building brings any of the fire provisions above into play. Removing an existing failed finish, and dealing with whatever is found behind it, is the item most often underestimated.

LokalMatch's role begins and ends with the introduction. Set the job out once with your postcode — the elevations, what is on them now, the height of the building and what you want instead — and cladding contractors working in your area will contact you. There is no charge to homeowners for posting a request; the businesses pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not clad buildings, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend any contractor, so obtaining the material classifications, the cavity detail and the guarantee position in writing is work that stays with you.