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Safety alert over substandard timber battens
Neil Gerrard Associate editor
Image courtesy of NFRC
Contractors should watch out for a large volume of non-standard timber battens that have been falsely coloured and/or stamped with BS 5534.
That’s the warning from the National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC), which has issued a safety alert to highlight the issue.
The NFRC said the battens’ appearance on the UK market could be due to the high demand for treated timber. The conflict in Ukraine, Brexit, and the Covid-19 pandemic have all contributed to shortages, it said.
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It has found battens falsely carrying the BS 5334 marking and/or falsely coloured, and then marketed as compliant.
Installation warning
It warned contractors not to install non-compliant battens. Battens that do not comply with BS 5534 have the potential to cause roof failures and accidents. This risk of accidents increases when workers use the roof battens as an alternative to a roof ladder. And it added that inferior battens could cause an issue of quality assurance for the whole roof system, impacting on the longevity of the roof.
HSG33 Health and Safety in Roof Work, from HSE, states that battens must be a minimum size of 50mm x 25mm (maximum span 600mm) or 38mm x 25mm (maximum span 450mm) and meet the grading requirements specified in BS 5534: Code of practice for slating and tiling, and included in NFRC Technical Bulletin 33, Graded battens for slating and tiling.
Identifying compliant battens
BS 5334 states that all graded battens should be marked with the following:
Suppliers’ details
Batten size
Species
Relevant Standard (in this case BS 5534)
Third-party certification.
All battens should be individually marked.
NFRC is chairing a working group on this issue, made up of contractors, manufacturers and merchants. If you have information you would like to share with the group on the topic of non-standard inferior battens being supplied and used, please contact the NFRC Technical team via [email protected].
The November/December 2025 issue of Construction Management magazine is now available to read in digital format.
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