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Fire safety legislation came under a barrage of criticism yesterday from enforcers, the fire trade and end users at a conference on fire risk assessment, organised by the Fire Industry Association.
Most of the speakers agreed that the Fire Safety Order in England and Wales, and to a lesser extent similar legislation in Scotland – is still proving confusing, conflicting and burdensome. The main problem areas were identified as: the concept of fire risk assessments and who is the most appropriate person to carry them out; the subjective nature of many of the terms in the legislation itself, and the lack of suitable guidance for specific sectors.
Fire safety expert Colin Todd made no apologies for posing more questions than providing answers. He asked whether it is realistic to generally expect duty holders to carry out their own fire risk assessments, given that risk assessments are, by their very nature, subjective and therefore inconsistent. He also suggested that the lack of central resources and expertise in government had left a vacuum in policy. However, he conceded that these are still relatively early days to judge the success of relatively new legislation. “It could be that after the dust has settled, a brand new, shiny fire safety regime will be revealed.”
Many of the speakers agreed that the concept of risk-based fire safety acknowledges that zero risk is impossible to achieve. But the problem was that some enforcers – and those carrying out risk assessments to comply with them – were tying themselves into knots by trying to achieve risk-free environments. Hilary Ross, for example, a solicitor who has carried out prosecutions for the Health and Safety Executive, said the objective of such legislation – which flowed from European directives – was to improve safety, not to create a zero risk regime.
With risk in mind, Jonathan Herrick of West Midlands Fire and Rescue pointed out that even the CLG guidance does not provide a complete definition of the concept of risk assessment. It speaks of risk assessors having to consider the risk of fire breaking out, but not of considering the many and varied consequences of fires in different premises and occupancies. And speaking of the enforcement role, he suggested that in the spirit of the legislation, fire and rescue services should only be concentrating on high risk premises. “We should, in theory, be going into high risk premises, otherwise what are we doing there? I could even pull holes in our own HQ, but I work there every day and I’m not fearing for my life!”
Addressing some of the issues of inconsistent enforcement, chairman of the CFOA national fire safety committee, Iain Cox, said there was a balance to be struck between consistency and flexibility. “A lot depends on intangibles such as management. A well run place may get away with something that a badly run place will not.”
In spite of all the criticism, there was a strong indication that speakers and delegates would not want to go back to the days of prescriptive legislation and fire certificates. David Weston, chief executive of the Bed & Breakfast Association, whose members have been at the sharp end of conflicting advice and requirements, said the principle of the risk being assessed by the premises owner or occupier was the right approach. “The core [of the Fire Safety Order] is right but almost everything else about it is wrong. It’s a bit of a dogs dinner!” He remembered, however, the pain of his parents who ran a hotel in the early 1970s and who went through some of the same issues as now after the introduction of the Fire Precautions Act!