Introduction to the Site

Valuation and home survey processes were previously insufficient to establish whether or not external cladding on high rise buildings [over 18 m height] contains combustible material and therefore would facilitate the spread of fire. Following the Grenfell tragedy and subsequent MHCLG [Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] guidance, EWS-1 forms were developed as a means of enabling competent fire experts to assess whether these buildings are fire safe and if not, to identify that remedial work needs to be carried out.

The provision of EWS-1 forms has proved successful in creating a clear and consistent means by which the market understands the documentation required to support the buying, selling or re-mortgaging of properties in high rise buildings. In consultation with MHCLG and in collaboration with RICS and other stakeholders including lenders and insurers, the FIA has created this unique portal which will provide a central readily-accessible location for EWS-1 forms and, for the first time, the ability for Fire Engineers to complete the forms on-line.

A rigorous approach is applied to the portal to include manual checks at various stages of the process. Each Fire Engineer wishing to submit forms must present evidence that they are fully qualified and competent to do so and this is interrogated prior to enabling their forms to be submitted to the portal. In addition, all existing forms and on-line submissions are subject to further checks to determine their validity before they appear as publicly-available documents. In this way, we would expect to eliminate the problem of fraudulent EWS-1 forms appearing in the market.

If you are a Fire Engineer, you must first register in order to be able to submit or complete forms on-line. On your registration being approved, you may submit existing forms or complete new forms on-line, both options being subject to our own checks prior to upload onto the site.

If you are a buyer, seller, lender, insurer or otherwise having an interest in particular properties in high rise buildings, you are able to search for buildings by post code, after which any building having this post code will appear with its full postal address and you will be able to view and download the EWS-1 form. We will ask you simply to enter a valid e-mail address in case we need to contact you.