NEWS Arson Prevention Forum gives latest update


AT THE Fire Sector Summit this year, the forum gave its latest state of the nation report.


Chairman Lee Howell, chief fire


officer for Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, spoke at the Fire Sector Summit in October at Aviva headquarters in London, stating that the level of deliberate fires in England is ‘totally unacceptable’, with 47% of all fires deliberate. Launching the report, the Forum is ‘calling on every police service, fire and rescue service, the Crown Prosecution Service, insurers and others to do more to reduce the cost and consequences of deliberate fires’. Mr Howell commented: ‘All


organisations with an interest in, or responsibility for, arson reduction must do more if we are to reduce the cost and consequences of deliberate fires. The figures are simply staggering and completely unacceptable. ‘Every year, 47 lives are lost


and over 76,000 deliberate fires


are recorded by fire and rescue services in England. Insurers pay out over £1 billion in fire related claims and a large proportion of this relates to deliberate fires. The level of successful prosecutions is also worryingly low and more research is needed to understand why this is the case. ‘Organisations must work


collaboratively, sharing information and learning from each other in


order to tackle this problem.’ Mr Howell continued:’Arson is


increasing, and reducing arson can only benefit society as a whole. What is needed is a strong commitment by all parties to work together to address what is a complex and multi-faceted problem ... with an increase in arson in both 2015/16 and 2016/17, the long term reduction in arson appears to have come to an end.’


NFCC and LFB call for sprinklers in schools


THE NATIONAL Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) and London Fire Brigade (LFB) commissioner Dany Cotton reiterated calls for sprinklers to be fitted in new and refurbished schools. BBC News reported on the


calls by both organisations, with systems already mandatory in new schools in Scotland and Wales but not England or Northern Ireland. The NFCC said this ‘must change’, while Dany Cotton accused the government of ‘playing with children’s lives’, as there are around 700 schools fires per year in England alone. Last year, the Department


for Education (DfE) in England consulted on new draft guidance, stating that building regulations no longer required ‘the installation of fire sprinkler suppression systems in school buildings for life safety’, and adding that ‘therefore [guidelines] no longer include an expectation that most new school buildings will be fitted with them’.


Ms Cotton was ‘appalled’ on seeing this guidance, and added: ‘I think it was outrageous. I thought, “How can we play with children’s lives like that?” I just do not understand why it wouldn’t be made compulsory and wouldn’t be made a requirement to fit sprinklers in schools at new-build stage. And what I don’t want to see is a very large school fire to be the thing that brings about that change. ‘Fires in schools cause major


disruption to pupils. Breakfast and after school clubs are cancelled and often, a costly repair bill could have been avoided. If they are incorporated from the design stage, sprinklers are around 1% of the total build cost.’ This consultation was dropped


after the Grenfell Tower fire, so the guidance ‘was never changed’, though the DfE’s ‘expectation [was] that all new schools will have sprinklers fitted’ unless considered ‘low risk’ and installation ‘would not be good value for money’. However, less than a third of 260 schools built


since 2014 have sprinklers, with LFB having recommended sprinklers in 184 new or refurbished schools – but only four schools implemented them. The NFCC added that the


proportion of schools built with sprinklers fell from 70% a decade ago to a third in 2016, with only 5% of schools in England and Wales having sprinklers. On interviewing construction industry representatives, BBC News found that many claimed ‘schools can be designed to be low fire risk with exit routes, fire doors and reinforced walls’. The DfE stated that the safety of children ‘was their priority’, with all schools required to have a fire risk assessment and all new schools required to ‘undergo an additional safety check while being designed [... ] it has always been the case that where the risk assessment recommends sprinklers in a school building, they must be installed’


www.frmjournal.com DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 9


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