Fire safety
Fire safety strategies: a burning issue
Darren Tubb, senior consultant for fire safety specialist Inspectas, explains where care home managers and proprietors ought to focus their fire safety strategy in order to stay within the law while delivering best practice for the safety of staff and residents
The care home sector, by its very nature, is vulnerable to fire incidents, with enquires from care home managers to Inspectas about fire safety planning and management having seen a near two-thirds increase over the past few months. Dated and extended buildings can also provide a fire safety hazard, with 75 per cent of our care home customers occupying buildings more than 35 years old, and 80 per cent of its newer build projects also needing retrospective fire safety strategies. Fire safety awareness training – from mandatory new starter training to additional fire safety training for night staff – is also reported to be lacking. The impact of the Grenfell Tower tragedy on changes to fire legislation and building regulations, emphasising the ‘fire strategy’ conditions, imposes additional challenges for care home owners and managers. Care budgets are stretched to the limit; therefore, balancing both care compliance and property compliance is extremely difficult. Compounded by the increase in National Insurance and underfunding from central and local government, the sector has faced many years of challenge. While property managers and senior leadership teams have a responsibility to ensure their buildings remain safe for residents and staff, budgets are set to be a challenging factor for years to come. This, coupled with a high duty of care in ensuring the safety of elderly or health-impacted residents, means that harnessing the
36
expertise of trusted property maintenance and compliance specialists enables a care home’s limited resources to be prioritised – ensuring compliance is not only achieved and sustained, but that confidence and assurance are the norm.
When looking at fire safety, the priority
is to examine the risk versus available maintenance funds, empowering management teams and managers to prioritise works in the context of the overall care home budget.
Legislative backdrop The Grenfell Fire tragedy brought into stark focus the risk to life that is inherent in poorly designed, constructed, maintained, and operated buildings, and this has
Balancing care compliance and property compliance is extremely difficult
naturally flowed into the rest of the property industry – including the care sector, where residential care homes represent a high risk in terms of occupancy profile and varying standards of design, maintenance, and age. The whole industry is now getting to grips with changes to The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRFSO) – the framework legislation governing fire safety in buildings in England and Wales. The Building Safety Act 2022, Fire Safety (England) Regulations, and changes to the Building Regulations enhance mandated fire safety requirements with a focus on multi-storey and high risk buildings.
The RRFSO applies to all workplaces and the common parts of buildings containing two or more domestic premises. It places legal duties on anyone in control of these premises (the Responsible Person – usually the owner or landlord) to undertake and record a fire risk assessment and put in place and maintain general fire precautions. In addition, the Building Regulations and
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com September 2025
Pixel-Shot -
stock.adobe.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
