NEWS
COVID-19
for employees’, adding that it was ‘not in a position to make individual judgements’. However, ‘clearly, we are all in the business of assessing risk and therefore that call has to be with yourself, and if fire life safety issues outweigh, in any single case, the threat to life from COVID-19 then the judgement has to rest with the individual assessor’. On that point, it added that ‘the call should be “is my movement and task essential to support critical infrastructure?”’, stating that if not, IFSM advice is ‘do not travel, stay at home and support crucial national infrastructure in this way’. It concluded by stating: ‘Rest
assured, council members are taking this “time out” to work from our isolated position on some critical details and papers which will define the future of fire risk assessment, fire risk assessors’ competency and fire risk assessors themselves’. SFRS in turn advised businesses to review FRAs after the national lockdown, recognising that ‘any businesses still open’, such as supermarkets or distribution centres, ‘may have additional stock and people working’. This could ‘adversely affect means of escape and staff understanding of safety measures’, and for businesses forced to close, fire risk ‘should be mitigated by completing full shut down procedures’, such as isolating electrical items. Arson risk ‘should be reduced by ensuring premises are secure, with any rubbish, bins or skips moved away from buildings’. SFRS also discouraged those self isolating ‘from doing so in a place of work that may not have been designed for sleeping’. Advice for building owners and landlords on operating waking watches was also updated by the NFCC, with Inside Housing reporting on that update and specifically on ‘how to operate the waking watch fire safety measure’ during the outbreak, outlining the steps building owners and landlords ‘should take to ensure that buildings are kept safe in the coming months’.
8 MAY 2020
www.frmjournal.com
‘balanced approach’ to fire safety for each property, as well as supporting building owners ‘by recognising potentially higher public health risks in buildings from the threat of coronavirus’. However, it maintained that it is still the duty of FRSs to enforce the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 ‘even in these difficult times’.
Fire safety personnel are key workers Fire Industry Association (FIA) chief executive officer Ian Moore enquired about the status of fire safety personnel, now named key workers. The FIA reported on the work
Landlords should ensure that waking watch operatives ‘adhere to Public Health England’s social distancing rules’, and should consider installing communal fire alarms if staff numbers fall due to isolation. In turn, it stated that the pandemic will result in ‘higher occupancy and vulnerability’ due to people, including potentially infected individuals, ‘staying at home for longer periods of time’, with the result that maintaining a waking watch in an at risk building ‘would be more essential than ever’. Its advice has always maintained that waking watches should be temporary measures ‘until dangerous materials are removed from a building’, but the ‘slow pace’ of cladding removal has seen some in place for years, at high cost to leaseholders. The NFCC advice stated: ‘If, due
to coronavirus, there are challenges maintaining waking watch coverage, those responsible will need to implement suitable alternative interim arrangements. Dependency on numbers of staff can be reduced through the installation of a common fire alarm. Competent persons, RPs [registered providers] and fire safety officers should familiarise themselves with the social distancing guidance from Public Health England, to ascertain how this might be applied to enable waking watches to remain in place.’ This NFCC update also advised that all the UK FRSs should take a
done by Mr Moore in ‘discussions’ with the Home Office to try and understand whether fire safety personnel were key workers or not, and thus able to access the same exceptions with regard to the nationwide lockdown. Mr Moore reported that Security Minister James Brokenshire had responded to his enquiry, stating that both security and fire safety personnel ‘can play a vital role at this time of national challenge’, and adding that ‘people working in these sectors who are essential to national infrastructure are “Key Workers” for the purposes of the Government’s guidance on COVID-19’. Mr Moore later noted that this had been extended to ‘all fire safety personnel actively working to improve public fire safety’.
Grenfell inquiry suspended Inquiry chair Martin Moore-Bick suspended hearings due to the outbreak, but was considering ‘electronic means’ to continue. His update came after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision pre lockdown which limited citizens to essential travel, to help the impact on the National Health Service. Sir Martin commented that ‘in the light of’ the statement ‘the Panel has decided that the Inquiry should hold no further hearings for the time being. ‘To do so, even on the basis of
limited attendance, would be to expose those whose presence is essential for that purpose, not to mention those whom we wish to call
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