Walls are important. You’d struggle to find a person who could make a reasonable argument to a contrary. They carry their weight in both the metaphorical and literal sense of the word. You know, supporting ceilings, conducting general compartmentation duties within a house, and keeping the outside away from the inside.
But in an era of new and complex compliance mandates, those of us who work with them may find the heavier burden is a regulatory one.
Before a single plasterboard panel hits a construction site, it first navigates a labyrinth of rules and standards pertaining to every element of its prescribed function. Fire resistance, acoustic insulation, structural integrity and water absorption must all be put to the test.
As we all know, these rules exist for a reason. Some ensure it can reasonably prove that it is able to protect against the devastating impacts of fire. Others stop the walls of a high-rise from conducting sound like a tin-can telephone. In a nutshell, the regulatory landscape is dense. It’s confusing, and - at the time of writing - still changing. But for those in the business of constructing buildings – we must understand it.
The origin story, who’s in charge of it all, and why they exist
It’s a very sad fact that building regulations mostly tend to be reactive action after truly unfortunate events. We often think of fire in this context, but structural failures can be similarly devastating.
English Building Regulations exist under the keen eye of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. They lay out performance standards across various aspects of construction, with the aim of ensuring that new buildings are safe, energy efficient, and structurally sound.
In recent times a steady stream of updates has refined the rules. Weaknesses in previous standards have been exposed. Fire safety has seen particular focus, but other standards are also fine-tuned to keep pace with construction methods and needs.
The major areas for plasterboard and their domains of regulation
There are specific building regulation parts that relate to the performance of walls and plasterboard. Part B covers fire safety – not only mandating the use of fire-resistant materials in certain applications, but dictating how walls should behave under extreme heat and how this must be demonstrated. Anyone looking to place a partition in a commercial or high-rise residential building must ensure that they have received and documented adequate evidence to meet the required performance ratings. Any manufacturer looking for it to be their board in a partition must have conducted the necessary tests under the necessary parameters to prove as such.
Alphabetically speaking, Part E comes next, covering requirements for acoustic insulation. This regulation ensures that walls in student accommodation, offices, hospitals, and hotels provide adequate soundproofing – because no one wants to hear what their neigbours are up to all hours of the day. Over in Part L, thermal insulation takes centre stage. Minimum performance levels for energy efficiency are set. These guidelines believe that buildings should not leak heat, as older constructions may have done, that residents are kept warm, and that energy consumption for the purposes of thermal conductivity should be minimised.
Part M deals with accessibility, requiring that walls are to be designed in such a ways that they reasonably facilitate movement for all occupants. Meanwhile, Part Q governs security. External walls (and doors, but that’s a different matter, for a different manufacturer) in certain building types, like those with shared residency, are adequately resistant to attempts of forced entry. Robustness, in Part A, ensures walls can withstand - reasonable - impact whilst remaining their integrity.
For those who enjoy a comprehensive list, the full set of relevant regulations includes*:
Part A: Structural Integrity
Part B: Fire Safety
Part E: Acoustic Insulation
Part L: Energy Efficiency
Part M: Accessibility
Part Q: Security
Fire standards
Back onto fire. Today, Approved Document B allows compliance either via BS476 testing, or via the EN route, however in the EN route, it mandates that it must be tested AND classified, not just tested. In 2029 Approved Document B is being revised to remove all reference to BS 476 as a route to compliance.
EN standards are European Norms, and there are a great number of them. They cover a vast range of test characteristics, across a vast range of construction products (you may, for instance, notice relevant standards denoted on household items like shower doors, kettles, boilers) dictate the boundaries within which fire characteristics are tested, measured, and applied.
The series relevant to fire is BS EN 13501, and it dictates a harmonious standard for fire characteristics across Europe, classifying materials based on how they contribute to or react to an inferno. EN 13501-1 is the key classification system, sorting materials into categories from A1 (won’t burn under any circumstances) to F (next to flammable). Plasterboard typically sits towards the higher end of this spectrum, but knowing ratings for materials for high-rise residential buildings, hospitals, and commercial spaces where safety standards are most stringent is critical.
Putting it into practise
Regulations are fantastic, but without enforcement, they’re just optimistic suggestions. Compliance is monitored through a mixture of planning approvals, on-site inspections, and post-construction checks. Building control bodies subject everything from materials to workmanship, to intense scrutiny to ensure constructions meet requirements.
High-risk buildings - high-rise residential blocks or hospitals – are duly subject to even more intense scrutiny. The Building Safety Act introduces better and further oversight, as these structures pose significant risk.
Built different – literally
Not all walls are created equal. Neither are the rules that govern them. Different types of buildings, different structures, have unique needs and performance requirements. For those in the construction industry, understanding the regulations around construction products is critical to ensure safety. Whether preventing spread of flame, keeping the heat in and the rain out, or creating a semblance of peace and quiet, or maintaining energy efficiency, building regulations help to shape the very essence of modern buildings.
*Note from the editor: it should be noted that, technically, all regulations can relate to plasterboard in some way, shape or form. However, this is a very long list, and perhaps one longer than you may be interested in reading. This is informative, educational, and – we hope - entertaining content and should not be taken in place of formal technical consulation.