Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire have welcomed an outright ban on the use of combustible cladding materials 15 months after the disaster, saying it is “the first signal we are being heard” by ministers.

James Brokenshire, the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, is expected to announce on Monday that the kind of panels and insulation that burned so ferociously on 14 June 2017, killing at least 72 people, will no longer be allowed under building regulations.

Plastics, wood and products that include combustible materials such as aluminium composite panels will be banned in the external wall systems used in residential buildings more than 18 metres tall, as signalled by ministers earlier this summer. The only materials that will be allowed are those classed as A1 or A2, which includes materials such as metal, stone and glass, which seldom contribute to fires; or plasterboard, which makes no significant contribution.

The move comes as survivors of the fire prepare to give evidence to the public inquiry for the first time. The inquiry has received 265 statements from survivors and bereaved families. Some have been asked to give oral evidence that will run for at least a month. Antonio Roncolato, who was trapped in his 10th-floor apartment for six hours before rescue, will be the first to speak on Wednesday. He will be followed by Miguel and Fatima Alves, who escaped with their children Inês and Tiago, and Hanan Wahabi, who lost five members of her family in the fire.

The regulatory change will signal a major upheaval in the building industry. A Whitehall source said the change was likely to prohibit the use of many insulation materials, including types of phenolic foam and polyisocyanurate foam derived from oil. The ban will also be extended to hospitals, schools and care homes and will affect the construction of more than 1,000 buildings a year, adding £10m to construction costs.

“This ban will save lives,” said Ahmed Elgwahry, who lost his mother and sister in the fire and has led the campaign by the bereaved and survivors for a change to the rules that allowed highly combustible plastic to be wrapped around Grenfell Tower. “Everyone who watched the tower burn that night knows the catastrophic consequences of these combustible materials. They should never have been on Grenfell. It is heartbreakingly too late for our families but we are one step closer to making sure other families across the country can go to bed at night safe in their homes.”

In England, 468 high-rise buildings have been identified as using cladding materials that have failed combustibility tests, but the ban will not be retrospective. However, ministers have ordered combustible panels to be taken down as soon as possible where they are in place on tall buildings. It has made £400m available to help local authorities, but private building owners are proving slower to act. Salford city council, which had nine of its council tower blocks coated in combustible cladding under a private finance initiative deal, has been told by the government it cannot access the money, because state funds cannot be used to bail out PFI deals. At the last count, remedial work had been carried out at only 32 of the affected buildings.

Brokenshire will discuss the Grenfell Tower disaster in a speech to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

“My work with Grenfell United and the wider community has been hugely helpful in keeping this issue right at the top of the government’s agenda,” he will say. “That is why today I can confirm that I will change the building regulations to ban the use of combustible cladding for all high-rise residential buildings, hospitals, care homes and student accommodation, and bring about a change in culture on building safety.”

The ban will simplify the regime for architects and builders. This had become highly complex, with some combustible materials passed as compliant with building regulations if they were shown to respond in a certain way during fire tests of whole cladding systems. The government has yet to decide on how such fire tests should be used in the future.

“I welcome this correction of the building regulation in regard to non-combustible materials,” said Arnold Tarling, an independent fire safety expert. “It takes us back to the safety standards we had in 1935 under the London Building Act. But what about all of the other buildings that have been built in the interim? Unprotected combustible insulation is used in cladding systems on thousands of buildings. What is the government going to do about that?”