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FIRE SAFETY


Getting to grips with the revised Part K


Following the Grenfell Tower fire, and Dame Judith Hackitt’s subsequent independent review of building regulations and fire safety, HTM 05-03: Part K: Guidance on fire risk assessments in complex healthcare premises,1


has been revised, with some extensive


changes. Maz Daoud, the head of Fire Safety, NHS Estates, NHS England – Commercial Directorate, here assesses the role of an HTM, the risks specific to complex healthcare premises, what’s new in the revised HTM 05-03 Part K, and how this applies in practice.


Health Technical Memoranda (HTM) give comprehensive advice and guidance on the design, installation, and operation, of specialised building and engineering technology used in the delivery of healthcare. They include use for when developing governance and assurance systems which take account of risk, and the safety of patients, staff, and visitors. They are issued by NHS England, and focus on


healthcare-specific elements of standards, policies, and up-to-date established best practice.1


They are applicable


to both new and existing sites, and are for use at various stages during the whole building lifecycle. In the hierarchy of guidance documents, they are akin to guidance issued under Article 50 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.2


n Dependent patients who rely on staff to evacuate them. n Patients with conditions such as dementia who need close supervision during a fire emergency.


n Patients with other behavioural conditions which may cause them to be disruptive during evacuation, or who have malicious fire-raising traits.


n Children undergoing treatment or care who may have relatives with them or nearby.


n Business continuity is vital to ongoing patient care, and may in itself be a life safety-critical element.


Evacuation protocols n A high level of training and competence for staff is required.


As such, compliance with the guidance may be relied upon as tending to establish legal compliance with fire safety duties. Fire safety is covered by the HTM 05 series, also known as Firecode, which includes the subjects shown in Table 1. The definition of a complex healthcare premises in Part


K is a ‘hospital or other healthcare premises which place a dependence on staff for evacuation’. This, however, only touches the surface of what one can find in a complex healthcare premises, with features which are not common, or less common, to other buildings, as follows:


Meeting the needs of patients n Very high dependency patients, for whom the act of evacuation can only be in exceptional circumstances, and may not be immediately possible, for instance in operating theatres.


n Evacuation not routinely commenced on the fire alarm sounding in many patient treatment or care areas. This is due to the risks which may be posed by an evacuation. Evacuation is only commenced when necessary.


n Progressive horizontal evacuation is the usual methodology for evacuation – i.e. away from the fire to initially a place of relative safety on the same floor.


n Specialised evacuation equipment and arrangements to ensure continuity of care away from the fire compartment (including availability of medical equipment, medication, and patients’ records).


n An environment in which a sounding fire alarm can be extremely disruptive and distressing.


n A greater emphasis on the importance of fire wardens, both in preventing a fire, and in fire safety, should one occur.


Below left: Figure 1. A hospital ward fire in which the medical gas pipeline system oxygen was not isolated at an early stage.


Below right: Figure 2. A hospital ward fire involving a medical gas pipeline system that was isolated at an early stage.


April 2025 Health Estate Journal 43


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