Fire Safety in Residential Property

A Practical Approach for Environmental Health

Richard Lord

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000398342
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Insurance
• Index: Business

This book aims to take the reader through all aspects of fire safety and management in residential settings, from origin and ignition, risk assessment, protection and prevention, as well as comparing effective enforcement options from across all parts of the UK. It outlines the basis of law, standards and guidance relating to fire safety and building performance, and critically evaluates the legal provisions and approaches to risk reduction with the focus on rented properties.

This book:

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• Provides wider access to fire safety knowledge previously generally used by regulators and specialists.

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• Examines fire risk assessments in domestic premises and the competency of assessors.

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• Explains the approaches to fire safety enforcement the impact of property licensing.

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• Includes fire risk precautions for housing and general checklists to help landlords and tenants understand their responsibilities

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• Explores the effect of existing legislation with references to key Property Tribunal decisions relating to fire risk management and future legal developments.

This book will assist Environmental Health Officers and Environmental Health Practitioners – as well as graduating academics of the field – in their work to encourage the appropriate and effective use of legislation. Landlords, Estate managers, student accommodation managers, surveyors and tenant groups may also find this book of interest.

1
Introduction

1.01

In recent years, a number of major fires in high-rise tower blocks have produced renewed public and professional concern about fire safety, not least because of the high number of fatalities resulting from landmark incidents such as those at Lakanal House (2009) and Grenfell Tower (2017) in London. Added to these, other non-fatal fires – including the Cube in Bolton (student accommodation), Samuel Garside House and Barking (both in 2019) and Lacrosse Tower in central Melbourne, Australia (2014) – have raised awareness of the devastating effects of residential fires on the physical and mental health of survivors and, more generally, on the fabric of local communities. According to the UK Home Office, at incidents attended by the Fire and Rescue Service, there are more than 7,000 non-fatal casualties in England each year.¹ In Scotland, there were over 1,100 in 2017–18.² These high numbers are partly a function of inadequate regard for fire safety in many new-build family houses.³

1.02

Although, overall, the UK continues to suffer from a systemic under-supply of new housing, the size of the private rented sector has increased dramatically over the past ten years. Rising demand has been driven in particular by:

• an acknowledged deficit in affordable housing;
• widening participation in the marketised higher education sector, resulting in rapid expansion in full-time student intakes and purpose-built accommodation to house these students;
• a growing numbers of young adults and migrants looking to establish themselves in shared housing or bedsit conversions.

The current UK Conservative Government has committed to bring into commission one million new homes by the end of 2020 and to ‘deliver half a million more by the end of 2022.’⁴ The scale of this ambition requires not only more rapid building but also, in many cases, the use of cheaper materials, for example, lightweight timber frames and other modern methods of construction (MMC).⁵ It is generally accepted that effective fire safety prevention and management for all types of residential settings require a joined-up multi-agency approach, in which a range of professions collaborate and co-operate to make sure a building is correctly built, managed and maintained. Planners, builders, building control officers, fire risk assessors and building managers must work towards the goal of delivering homes that are safe to live in. However, occasionally, badly built or refurbished residential buildings that are certified as meeting building regulations subsequently burn down.

1.03

Occupiers have a responsibility to minimise fire hazards in their homes. To support householders across the UK, the National Fire Safety Chiefs Council (NFSCC) coordinates and supports a number of national safety week initiatives every year. These include Home Safety Week, the main purpose of which is to encourage occupiers to make sure they have sufficient fire alarms in their homes and to test them. According to the NFSCC ‘in 20 per cent of accidental dwelling fires in the UK, smoke alarms fail to activate.’⁶

1.04

In England and Wales there is a dual enforcement approach to fire safety in residential buildings, which can be confusing to landlords, tenants and building managers. Local Housing Authority (LHA) officers – typically Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) – assess the fire hazards in residential premises using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) under the Housing Act 2004 and associated regulations. The purpose of these assessments is to minimise the risk across all tenures of housing through advice, improvements and property licensing conditions. Where dwellings fail to meet fire safety standards of refurbishment or change of use – for example, from a family house to a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO) – it is often EHOs who assess and take steps to mini-mise fire hazards in partnership with fire and rescue authorities. However, EHOs increasingly require additional knowledge to assess the actual risk of fire across all parts of residential developments. As well as the individual dwellings, assessment includes the internal common parts and external parts, particularly of high-rise residential buildings (HRRBs). In the UK, housing as a government function is devolved across the four constituent nation states and is characterised by different regulatory approaches. The self-governing Crown dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) also have independent approaches to fire safety regulation.

1.05

The risk of a domestic fire starting and the damage it can cause vary according to the specific circumstances. Depending on the seriousness of a fire’s impact, questions may be asked in inquests, inquiries, court cases or risk assessment reviews to try to understand what went wrong and why, and how to prevent a recurrence. Like much other health and safety law around the world, UK fire safety legislation has developed and evolved over centuries, often in direct response to specific tragedies and with a view to minimise the likelihood of a recurrence. Chapter 2 explores how the UK’s body of fire safety law has been shaped from before the Great Fire of London to the present day, considers legislation in other countries that is relevant to fire prevention in the home and provides a focus on historic disasters from which major fire safety legislation was developed.

1.06

Today a high level of specialised knowledge and professional expertise is often necessary in assessing risks in specific buildings, not least large and complex residential dwellings. EHOs and non-specialists in fire safety inevitably have variable levels of understanding of the fire hazard and risks in domestic settings, and often they are unable to get advice and guidance from fire and rescue authorities as a consequence of funding cuts and under-resourcing. As a basis for developing further knowledge, Chapter 3 sets out the principles of fire, specifically in a domestic setting. These include ignition sources, fire formation and compartmentation to prevent spread and what fire precautions may be required, based on the risk.

1.07

Landlords are required to make sure that a ‘suitable and sufficient’ fire safety risk assessment is made of the common parts of blocks of flats and HMOs to protect life safety, especially in sleeping accommodation.⁷ There is no legal requirement for a risk assessment to be undertaken by a third-party professional. However, many landlords and building managers engage consultants to act on their behalf, although they (the landlords or managers) remain responsible for the suitability of assessment. Landlords need to be able to determine what level of fire risk assessment is necessary for a particular building. Also, they should have sufficient knowledge either to undertake the assessment themselves or to adequately instruct an independent assessor who is sufficiently knowledgeable to undertake it on their behalf. Landlords need to be aware of the consequences of not engaging a competent assessor. Many risk assessors are not familiar with the HHSRS and the relationship with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety Order) 2005 (FSO). Landlords of smaller properties may only require a basic understanding of ignition, fuel, fire protection measures and what routine management is necessary to allow them to undertake a risk assessment themselves. Chapter 4 explores fire risk assessments and the competency of assessors, fire service enforcement and, briefly, the impact of the building regulations on the fire risk. Chapter 5 considers levels of fire safety management, including evacuation strategies, testing and maintenance of fire alarms, fire extinguishers and fire doors and the management of electrical safety.

1.08

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in the number of property licensing schemes operating in the UK, particularly in larger cities and university towns. In this context, there has never been a greater need for all professions that have responsibility to manage, risk assess and regulate housing to fully understand how to use the differing parts of the Housing Act 2004 correctly and how the relationship with the FSO should work. LHA property licensing schemes can impose conditions on licence holders, requiring them to provide fire precautionary facilities and effective management of privately rented houses and HMOs. The importance of correct use of the different parts of the Housing Act 2004 property licensing schemes will be explored in Chapter 6.

1.09

As a result of local authority funding cuts, EHOs rarely have the capacity to offer free advice and to prepare extensive schedules of work to help landlords and managers meet their fire safety obligations. In better-resourced times, EHOs would, for example, have been able to advise on larger HMOs or converted blocks of flats with multiple cooking facilities and poor separation. Landlords are increasingly expected to meet their responsibilities themselves or to engage a third-party consultant to help them. These issues are dealt with in Chapter 7, along with references to the LACORS Housing – Fire Safety: Guidance on Fire Safety Provisions for Certain Types of Existing Housing, which is considered by LHA officers and First-tier Tribunals as the gold standard reference documentation for fire safety in England. The management and risk assessment of high-rise residential buildings will be considered in Chapter 8. This will include the hazard presented by external wall cladding and licensing of larger blocks of student accommodation. The final chapter will consider the future legal and fire safety policy developments and Government responses arising out of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, still in session at the time of writing. These responses will include proposed new legislation and formal recognition that fire risk assessors should be competent.

1.10

This work differs from other fire safety and risk assessment publications in its exclusive focus on the hazard of fire in residential settings. It aims to bring together current available information into one concise publication to help LHA officers, landlords, property managers and student accommodation managers to understand the relationship between the Housing Act 2004 and the FSO and to use the correct legislation appropriately and effectively.

Notes

1 The Home Office collects detailed information on incidents attended by fire and rescue services, www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-statistics

2 See Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, www.firescotland.gov.uk/about-us/fireand-rescue-statistics.aspx

3 See New-build Homes Not Fire Safe, BBC News, 30 April 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48113301

4 Housebuilding Targets – Debate Pack Number CDP 2019–0147, House of Commons Library, 10 June ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of images
• List of primary legislation
• List of secondary legislation
• British Crown dependencies and Australia
• Glossary of acronyms
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The development of fire safety legislation
• 3 Principles of fire
• 4 Fire safety risk assessment and fire protection in residential premises
• 5 Essentials of fire safety management in residential dwellings
• 6 Fire safety, the Housing Health and Safety Rating System and property licensing – law and practice
• 7 Fire risk and precautions for different types of housing
• 8 Management and regulation of blocks of flats and larger student accommodation developments
• 9 Future legal developments
• Index