The External Fire Review form (EWS1)

The External Fire Review form (EWS1) has been developed by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) together with UK Finance and the Building Societies Association (BSA), primarily to give comfort to those lenders on the fire safety of High Rise Residential apartment blocks.

It is CIAT's understanding that the form is intended to be completed by professionals with the necessary experience in fire safety and testing, who are able to access the component parts of an external wall system i.e. cladding, insulation etc. and also hold the appropriate professional indemnity insurance (PII). As this is a specialised role that may require samples of cladding material to be taken and tested, especially where the original specification or 'as built' information is no longer available, the completion of this form does not fall within the course of general architectural technologists' duties. As a result, the liabilities that will arise from the completion of the form are unlikely to fall within the scope of your PII.

If you are asked to complete this form, as a first step, we would recommend contacting your insurance brokers to ensure that your current PII policy will cover this work. Unfortunately, we have been advised that the majority of PI insurers are not prepared to offer cover for this type of work, with the RICS minimum terms now being amended to reflect that this risk can be excluded.

In the event that your current policy does not provide cover, you may need to consider securing separate cover which would need to be maintained for the duration of the liability period, although such cover may be prohibitively expensive.

We would also refer you to the RICS website for a set of FAQs.