FOCUS
Status update Jonathan O’Neill explores the post Grenfell
implications for fire safety management and what has changed since the June 2017 fire
I
APOLOGISE to those expecting to read anything defi nitive or authoritative, because extraordinary as it seems, the truth is that not a
lot has changed since Grenfell, and sadly I can’t tell you what will. That said, in the next session of parliament, the government will bring forward laws to implement new building safety standards. Assuming we have the same government, and that this session does not get as bound up as the last one in talking about nothing else but Europe, it appears as though something will happen – but the scope and detail remain unclear. Actually, it shouldn’t be me apologising, because it is not as though I – alongside many other so called ‘leaders’ in UK fire – had not been continually writing to ministers and offi cials demanding not only regulatory change, but also offering assistance to facilitate it. We have been doing it for a quite a long time – long before Grenfell – because we have not had a review of the building regulations (BRs) for fi re in more than 14 years! It’s quite extraordinary if you think about it. Despite building methods changing
considerably over that period; despite a huge rise in the amount of combustible material used
in the building process; and despite the large body of evidence that modern building structures react quite differently to traditional buildings when subjected to fi re, we have not had a major revision to the fi re regulations since 2005. Unbelievable! In fact – apart from the ban on combustible
materials on buildings in excess of 18m – in theory I could legally design a block of fl ats to the same building code in force prior to Grenfell, and there are tower blocks being constructed in sight of it that – save for the combustibility of cladding – are designed to the same ruleset. Still without a formal announcement of a full
BR review, in late August 2017 the government announced a review of the regulatory system led by Dame Judith Hackitt, who reported in May 2018. The government’s legislative plans should fi nally put her recommendations to bed. To be fair – and I am rarely credited with being fair to ministers and officials – just before Christmas 2018, 18 months after the fi re and six months after Dame Judith’s report, James Brokenshire – the then Housing Secretary at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) – announced a call for evidence.
24 DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020
www.frmjournal.com
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