Is the National Trust doing enough to protect its historic houses from fire?

‘The vulnerability of this building in the event of a fire, and the potential for rapid fire spread through the building, was documented to National Trust some years prior to the fire.’ - TFT Consultants on Clandon Park

In 2020 the National Trust said that it would cost £115 million to rebuild Clandon House. The eventual insurance payout amounted to only £66.3 million. The charity has not revealed for what sum the property was insured.

In 2020 the Fire Protection Association reported on a legal battle over the fire that gutted Clandon Park in Surrey. The Surrey based contractor Cuffe plc and London based surveyors Tuffin Ferraby Taylor (TFT) were named in a claim by the National Trust as being ‘at fault over a lift shaft they worked on a decade earlier’. Had the lift shaft resisted the fire for an hour as it should have done, the damage done by the fire would have ben substantially reduced. The fire was found to have been caused by a ‘fault on an electricity distribution board in a cupboard in the basement’.

In a writ filed at the Technology and Construction Court, the NT said that the £115m repair bill it was facing was a ‘conservative estimate’, adding: ‘Owing to the unique nature of the property and the highly sensitive nature of the restoration work that will be required, [the trust’s] losses have not yet been fully quantified but the claimant estimates that they will exceed £115m.’

It alleges that Cuffe and TFT ‘were at fault’ in their work, as the lift shaft ‘was not built in accordance with building regulations and fire safety standards’, and ‘did not offer any protection against fire’, which allowed the fire to ‘spread swiftly’. The claim adds: ‘[The fire] spread because of the defendants’ breaches of duty in respect of the design and/or construction of a lift shaft near the cupboard, which, owing to those breaches, had no, or no adequate, fire resistance.’

In turn, it alleges that Cuffe ‘fail[ed] to carry out the lift works it undertook with due diligence and/or in a good and workmanlike manner and/or with reasonable care and skill, exposing the trust to the risk of a fire spreading through the house’, while TRT was accused of ‘failing to exercise the degree of care and sill that would be expected of a reasonably competent’ firm.

Post fire, the NT noted that ‘hundreds of paintings, furniture and artefacts’ were destroyed, and that the structure ‘remains little more than a shell’, with the writ stating: ‘The fire started as a result of an electrical fault on the electricity distribution board. For the avoidance of doubt, it is not the trust’s case that the defendants were responsible for the occurrence of this fault but they were and are responsible for the fact that the fire was able to spread to affect the whole of the home.’

The fire damage ‘would have been minimal and/or very significantly reduced’ had the lift shaft been ‘properly built and able to resist fire for at least one hour, in line with regulations’, but the NT alleged that the shaft contained ‘timber, plywood or other combustible elements which could aid in the spread of fire’, and that Cuffe used plasterboard ‘instead’ of fire resistant materials ‘that had been specified as necessary’.

There was also said to be ‘no evidence of any adequate fire prevention features’, with the NT stating that TFT ‘failed to produce’ a specification or drawings that ‘included sufficiently detailed information and instructions for fire-resisting and/or fire-stopping measures’. Cuffe declined to comment, and was ‘understood’ to have issued a defence as well as denying liability – with no date set for a court hearing at this time.

A TFT spokesperson commented: ‘TFT Consultants denies the unfounded allegations that have been made in this legal claim and will defend it vigorously and in its entirety. The vulnerability of this building in the event of a fire, and the potential for rapid fire spread through the building, was documented to National Trust some years prior to the fire.

‘The cause of the fire is known to be a defective electrical distribution board in a basement cupboard (next to a stair well), which had no connection to any work by TFT and a building contractor. The legal action is focused on seeking to recover a contribution to the insurance losses, where previous attempts to recover from the parties responsible for the root cause of the fire appear to have failed.

Clandon House remains under scaffolding ten years after the fire.