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Fire safety standards in hospitals have been put under the spotlight in a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast last night. File on 4 discovered divisions between NHS trusts and fire and rescue services about role of sprinklers, and the priority that is being given to fire safety in hospitals around the country.
Among the participants in the programme were FSE’s editor, Ron Alalouff, who spoke about the legal requirements for fire safety in general, and about sprinkler protection in particular.
Other contributors included Valerie Shawcross, chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, who said that the NHS does not give enough priority to fire safety, and that the fire at the Royal Marsden Hospital in early January was a wake up call for the NHS.
She told the programme: “I think it’s very important that the rest of the health service looks at what’s happened with the Royal Marsden and says…if you can get such a dramatic and dangerous fire in what is regarded as a relatively safe and well managed hospital, what would happen in an institution which was in an older or less well managed building?”
Other contributors to the programme included professor Ed Galea of the Fire Safety Engineering group at the University of Greenwich, who was actually present at the Royal Marsden when the fire broke out.
The programme went on to investigate the circumstances surrounding a fire at Warrington Hospital in 2002, where patients were evacuated just in time as a ward filled with smoke in around 4 minutes – and another at the mental health unit at Liverpool’s Broadgreen Hospital, where a patient died just 24 hours before the fire at the Royal Marsden.
The programme discovered that 22 enforcement notices have been served on NHS Trusts since the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order came into force in October 2006, but this figure accounted for only half the fire and rescue services in England alone.
A Department of Health spokesperson told File on 4 that the NHS had an excellent fire safety record, and the number of deaths and injuries from fires in the NHS is very low. “The department continues to work with stakeholders including the Chief Fire Officers’ Association, to assess the need to update Firecode guidance in light of experience from fire incidents in both the NHS and wider environment to reflect best practice.”
File on 4 will be repeated on Sunday 3 February at 5.00pm. To listen to it now, follow the link below: