Timber cladding on new-ish build, should I be worried?

[rbubu]

Does anyone have experience owning a house with timber cladding? We're looking at a 2016 Taylor Wimpey 2-storey detached house which has decorative timber (not plastic) cladding covering the front of the property. But since Grenfell, surely these are now seen as a fire risk - anyone know? Or even better, anyone own a property like this and can share some pros and cons with us? Thank you!

Well Grenfell was a high rise block of flats that had combustible cladding. If you were buying a flat in a high rise block I would probably be concerned but if it's a two storey house personally I wouldn't be worrying too much. Yes timber is combustible but it depends what's under the cladding? Is it brick or concrete?

I'd be more worried about maintenance: re-painting and having to replace it when it rots. Taylor Wimpey so will have been the cheapest possible to do the job.

I’d be worried about it looking awful in a couple of years rather than the fire risk. All the new builds that have had timber cladding round my way look an absolute state in about 5-8 years. Even if you manage to keep yours nice, the ones in surrounding houses may well not and it sort of gets past a point of repair pretty quickly.

Thanks for the feedback! Yup it's brickwork behind, no problems there. And there's only one other house on the street opposite with the same cladding, so as long as we were both to maintain and repaint, should look ok I reckon? We were mostly concerned about fire risk and insurance implications, but I guess for a 2-storey that's not really going to be a concern as it's only one side of the house.

Just make sure you disclose it to insurers. There probably won't be any issues as they're mostly concerned with big blocks but just be on the safe side

Given the age of the house it'd be built to building regs so I wouldn't be explicitly calling it out to insurers. Asking for expensive premiums by doing that!