Check a fire-class citation yourself, in under five minutes

A fire-class citation rests on two documents, and both of them are free to open.

Legislation.gov.uk carries the regulation itself, the Building Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/2214) as amended, in full and at no cost. This is the text a pedestal deck specification is answerable to.

The published Approved Document B sits alongside it, also free to download, and sets out one way of satisfying that regulation. It is guidance, and where a paragraph of it conflicts with the regulation it accompanies, the regulation governs. Approved Document B says this of itself.

Checking a citation means opening both and reading the sub-paragraph a specification or datasheet names. Regulation lettering has shifted between editions, and a guidance paragraph can go on pointing to a sub-paragraph that no longer says what it once did.

Where this goes wrong in practice

Approved Document B Volume 1 paragraph 10.12 cites regulation 2(6)(c) of SI 2010/2214 as the definition of relevant metal composite material. Open the current England text of regulation 2(6) and that definition sits at sub-paragraph (b). The guidance paragraph and the regulation it names no longer agree, and the only way to see that is to read the sub-paragraph itself.

A worked account of this particular divergence, and what it means for a specification that has copied the paragraph 10.12 wording without checking it, is set out in The Approved Document B Paragraph 10.12 Miscitation.

Regulation 2(6) of the Building Regulations defines a set of terms used throughout the regulations, and it does so with lettered sub-paragraphs: (a), (b), (c) and so on. The England text and the Wales text do not letter those definitions the same way. A term that sits under sub-paragraph (c) in one version can sit under a different letter in the other.

That means a citation reading only "regulation 2(6)(c)" tells you nothing you can check. You do not know which text the author was reading, and you do not know which defined term the letter is pointing to. The letter is a position in a list.

What to ask for instead

When a citation rests on regulation 2(6), ask for the defined term by name alongside the letter, for example "the definition of a relevant building at regulation 2(6)" rather than "regulation 2(6)(a)". With the term named, you can open either text and find the right sub-paragraph yourself, whichever letter it happens to carry there.

A citation only tells you something if you can open the document behind it and find the same words. Three places in this subject are where a citation and its source have come apart, and each is checkable in the same way: find the document, find the paragraph, read the sentence.

Regulation 2(6): a letter that points two different places

Regulation 2(6) of the Building Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/2214) sets out definitions used elsewhere in the regulations. The England text and the Wales text letter those definitions differently, so a bare reference such as "regulation 2(6)(c)" does not tell you which defined term is being cited unless you also know which text it comes from. Quoting the letter without naming the term it introduces is not a citation a reader can check, because the same letter can mean something else in the other version of the text.

Approved Document B paragraph 10.12

Paragraph 10.12 of Approved Document B Volume 1 is cited in pedestal deck literature for a rule the published paragraph does not contain. The Approved Document B Paragraph 10.12 Miscitation sets out what the paragraph has been made to say in circulation against what it actually says. Checking it takes the time it takes to open the current edition of the Approved Document and read 10.12 in full.

A datasheet citing a classification it has not demonstrated

A datasheet can print a reaction to fire classification such as A2-s1,d0 beside a standard reference without the two actually matching, and without naming the test house that issued the classification at all. A classification is only checkable against a test certificate, so a figure printed with no test house and no date of test is a claim you cannot verify from the page in front of you.

Each of these is checked the same way: find the document, go to the exact paragraph or sub-paragraph, and read what it says.