Revolution rather than evolution in fire safety

THE EXCHANGE of letters between the Passive Fire Protection Federation (PFPF), C S Todd & Associates and the editor in the November 2007 edition of the journal serves to highlight the mess that the government has made in its efforts to ‘modernise’ the British fire service and revolutionise fire safety legislation, rather than continue the evolutionary process of updating fire safety regulations and guidance to meet the changes in society.

Dealing, as I am at this time, with buildings where the integrity of passive fire protection is a key issue, I found that the technical input of Mr Sugden’s article for the PFPF was very useful. The response from Mr Todd led me to contact the Fire and Resilience Directorate within Communities and Local Government to gain confirmation of certain statements made. As I have found previously when contacting the department, unless you can gain access to one key person, then the level of knowledge about the Fire Safety Order is extremely poor – especially considering that this is the lead government department on fire legislation and fire and rescue services since the culling of HM Inspectorate of Fire Services (HMIFS). The attitude of some staff varies between lack of interest and condescension, which can leave the caller feeling he should not be wasting his time.

While there are many conflicting views on the interpretation of the Fire Safety Order, there is no doubt that the competence of all persons in the chain involved with any particular building – from the responsible person, through the building owner, building occupier(s), competent person(s) installers of fire alarms and suppression systems, right down to the individual fire wardens and those responsible for evacuation – could end up in court when things go wrong and fatalities occur. The Fire Safety Order and Guidance Note 1, together with the various recent case studies of Crown court judgements in London and East Sussex (and thanks to East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service for an excellent report on p.14 of the November journal), leave absolutely no doubt that the penalties for infringement will be severe for all concerned where serious breaches of fire safety legislation take place – provided fire and rescue services are as diligent as East Sussex, which from my current experience is certainly not the case. Albeit these two cases were the last to be brought under the former Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations 1997, the implications for those ending up in court under the Fire Safety Order will be at least as severe as was noted by the judges in these two cases.

At about the same time, BBC South West carried out an investigation into hotel fire safety and found serious shortcomings in fire precautions in 13 hotels. My own written requests to the fire and rescue services of both Cornwall and Lancashire for basic information in relation to their respective fatal hotel fires during the summer of 2007 have been stonewalled as both services quoted Section 30 of the Freedom of Information Act to support their refusal to provide me the information requested. The information requested was merely: Did the hotel in question have a risk assessment in writing, as required under the Fire Safety Order; and, if so, were there any outstanding actions that required attention? I was careful to point out that I did not want details of any specific actions, just to know if any had been required.

There is no central register of premises against which fire authorities are taking legal action following discovery of deficiencies in the Fire Safety Order, and there is no consistency across the country in the stance taken by fire authorities in their approach to enforcement of contraventions to the Order.

Lancashire is a brigade quoted earlier in the year in the journal as having multiple prosecutions pending. Berkshire Fire and Rescue apparently can find nothing wrong across the entire county, according to an answer given by their chief fire officer to the fire authority at their last meeting in October – with the brigade managing only five inspections per week of premises that must comply with the Fire Safety Order.

Given the reductions in fire cover, fire stations with no common standards for attendances across the UK since the implementation of integrated risk management plans, and the axing of HMIFS in England and Wales, there is no-one looking over the shoulders of fire authorities and ensuring some measure of commonality in operational and fire safety provision.

Dealing, as I do, with premises in both England and Scotland, there is a discernably different, more clearly defined attitude from fire officers north of the border in the implementation of the Fire Scotland Act 2005 and the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006.

So, coming full circle back to the tripartite exchange of views in the November journal, with all these elements of change in the mixing pot making the provision of fire protection both dynamic and uncertain, it is essential for the new Fire Risk Management journal – the new name for FP&FEJ – to retain complete independence of editorial control, although by all means have some form of checking of articles for accuracy of content.

So all power to the Fire Risk Management journal as a core publication for discussion, debate, lively information exchange and independence of view in 2008 and beyond. Never was such a forum more needed for, in this current cauldron of legislative change, affecting both operational and fire safety practices and procedures, the outcome in terms of the severity of building fires and lives lost will not, I fear, improve in the short and medium term. Indeed, as shown by the Warwickshire warehouse fire tragedy, I believe ‘the worst is still to come’.

R J Coates MIFireE, FCMI, IAFC
rcoatesfire@btinternet.com

Cornwall and Lancashire fire and rescue services wish to point out that it was inappropriate for them to publicly comment on the two fatal hotel fires sub judice. They were unable to provide Mr Coates with the information he requested relating to the incidents because it remained relevant to the ongoing criminal investigations into the respective incidents.

Fire safety guidance and enforcement in HMOs

I WAS very interested in the numerous articles applicable to houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) that appeared in the January edition of Fire Risk Management, having previously been involved with fire safety enforcement and also dealt with HMOs with a local housing authority.

It is unbelievable that, after all the debate over the years about standards and legislative amendments with regards to these types of occupancies, we never seem to progress.

A guide on HMOs was developed in the 1980s, and took about ten years to produce. It was dropped after about three years as some local authorities were not prepared to enforce the guidance or considered it to be outdated. We then had the Government Circular 12/92, but this comprehensive guide slipped into the archives when the Housing Health and Safety Rating System became the focal point.

We are now informed that a working group is developing a risk-based technical guidance document for residential accom-modation, for consultation in 2008 (see Fire Risk Management, January 2008, p.12). It is fine producing a document, but will local housing authorities enforce the guidance? Unless these standards are enforced, we will have the same problems arising in another ten years time. For instance, some landlords are suggesting that they should no longer fit self-closing devices to fire doors, due to changes in the Building Regulations in England and Wales, or they argue that a full fire warning system may not be needed because the fire authority will fit smoke alarms with ten-year batteries for free.

Having been involved with the Fire Precautions Act 1971 from its inception and used Section 10 powers on HMOs, I fully expected that, when the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order was introduced in England and Wales, it was not envisaged that this problem would arise. I was of the opinion that the main reason for including the common areas within the remit of fire authorities was so that they could take some immediate action to reduce the fire risk to the occupants if they came across a hazardous situation – especially out of office hours, when it may take some time for an officer from the local housing authority to attend.

We all talk about risk-based guidance as though this is a new and revolutionary system, but surely the guidance supporting the previous legislative regime was based on risk and the provision of reasonable means of escape in case of fire.

The consultation document that set out the proposed Fire Safety Order stated that the intent is to apply the regime – that is, HMOs and blocks of flats – only so far as landlords, etc, should be responsible for common fire precautions and the maintenance of fire precautions for use by the fire service (a wider application of the management of HMO regulations). So, where did it all go wrong? And how soon can this anomaly be resolved?

I can appreciate landlords being concerned with the present duplication as no-one wants to comply with one enforcing authority, only to be told that standard is not adequate and additional work is required by the other, or vice versa. Are some authorities jumping the gun due to lack of case law on these changes?

Another point of interest was the article on smoke detectors and fire alarms (see Fire Risk Management, January 2008, p.16). The main problem being the failure of installation engineers to comply with the sounds levels of the British Standard and attain 75db at the bedhead. The reason for this is that, in the past, some inspectors and engineers did not have sound meters to test the audibility, but were quite happy to sign the acceptance certificate. I used to make a point of recommending to the technician that they consider putting a detector incorporating its own sounder in some of the bedrooms, or a separate sounder to ensure that the appropriate level was obtained.

Tony Roberts
Technical officer

Concern over fire resistance of warehouse floors

FOLLOWING THE Atherstone on Stour fire and tragic loss of life, the questioning of fire safety controls of large storage buildings would do well to consider potential for another tragedy in the event of a serious fire in a self-storage type warehouse building, of which many are in existence or being developed around the UK.

In relation to these customer-accessible storage facilities, there may, in my mind, be a number of important fire safety issues that generally may not be adequately addressed – not least, operators’ seeming aversion to sprinkler protection – but there is one other particular matter to note.

Floors in these often multi-storey buildings are sometimes ‘free-standing’ and constructed of lightweight cold-rolled steel joists and chipboard decking – similar to methods commonly used to construct raised storage decks and mezzanines.

Fire-resistance performance requirements of such floors are claimed to be satisfied by contribution of certified fire-resisting suspended ceiling systems. However, in cases I have examined, I have found worrying issues. There have been crucial differences between the specimen floors tested and the proposed floor constructions, indicating the latter may have significantly less fire resistance than the test result. Certified fire-resistance performance has been conditional on maximum superimposed loading of the floors, which is exceeded by the structural design performance specifications, or which may well be exceeded when such floors are in service.

Edges of such floors and ceilings abut external wall claddings in ways that have no performance verification and where there is likelihood that fire will bypass the suspended ceiling membrane. And these are by no means the only issues I have found that have a bearing on fire safety in such structures.

In being alerted to these issues or on being challenged with them, I wonder what responses there may be from building control bodies (especially from those who have vouched for such constructions), from recognised manufacturers and suppliers of such floor and ceiling systems and, not least, from operators and managers of such premises, whose responsibilities are perhaps greatest and most urgent.

Ian Featherstone MRICS, MBEng, GIFireE