Federation calls for a national fire strategy

The Fire Sector Federation (FSF) has published a white paper calling for a wider discussion to create a national fire safety strategy that goes beyond current legislative proposals

The ‘Developing a National Strategy for Fire Safety’ document sets out a possible pathway for the fire sector and government to work together to create a safer society from fire.
    
The proposals were developed by a new FSF Fire Safety Strategy Board, with leadership expertise drawn from across a diverse range of sectors including, fire safety, fire and rescue, construction, insurance and building control.  
    
The Federation believes that the UK needs to think afresh about fire safety and in doing so make better use of the collective knowledge, expertise and understanding that exists to create a fire safe society.
    
The white paper suggests the UK lacks a holistic fire safety strategy. This failure is because the prevailing aim too readily seeks to reconcile and compromise rather than take forceful action to achieve a clear objective. A new holistic strategy is therefore needed to offer coherence, guide policy following diagnosis of the weaknesses and analysis of barriers that are preventing greater success.  
    
It argues that fire safety improvement has historically been a low priority in Britain. Despite singular stages of improvement, usually following tragic fires, and occasional investment in step changes, the approach over many years’ indicators shows progress remains evolutionary rather than proactive and planned. The current pathway just isn’t good enough and is best described as one of stuttering
forced advancement.  
    
The paper says there are many reasons for this situation, not least complacency.  Two decades of low fire deaths and constant juggling of priorities for public expenditure left policy makers believing the false assumption that they really had fire under control. Cited as one clear example with profound consequence was the stagnation of Building Regulations for fire at a time when the construction sector’s juggernaut was expanding in economic importance, following greater and new investments in practices and solutions.
   
Constant investments and changes in construction techniques, developed from sound reasoning like, achieving better value, meeting requirements to lower energy use with better insulation, the pressing need to build more homes faster, etc. resulted in a series of changes such as introducing alternative materials, some with more combustible content, alongside industrialised offsite manufacture of building elements. The building workforce also evolved, altering its overall understanding of fire and on-site supervision, with its focus shifting towards integrated supply trains and itemised cost management.
    
Significant change of this kind ultimately led to fire being a lower priority yet still having to compete against numerous other policy imperatives all demanding policy and financial attention.
    
The Federation considers this lowering of placement in the policy prioritisation framework a serious miscalculation; one that urgently needs reassessment and readjustment to recognise that prioritisation affects all types of investments and lowering raises the risk of further catastrophic failure.
    
Fire safety in the UK must not continue to be reactive to tragedy. This is not to dismiss reaction to failure, learning from the past remains a key component to advancement, but it has to be seen in the context of what has and is happening in the round.
    
Right now, the country is embarking upon a cultural and legislative regime shift in building safety, attempting to define and rigorously enforce compliance with fire safety at the design and construction stages of buildings.
    
However, this crucially important process is considered a relatively discreet part of what is an infinitely far more complex and larger scale problem, one that goes way beyond construction.
    
Looking at life safety from fire, which impacts so many other spheres of occupation and endeavour, should not be seen as a series of isolated problems, but as the parts of a holistic issue. This means pulling the many policy areas currently operating in siloes together, building interconnections so they work effectually with each other to benefit public safety.
    
Redressing this policy indifference should ensure that the subject of fire is seen as invested in the widest public and stakeholder communities and not the prerogative of one government department, like the Home Office, or even in one service, albeit the fire and rescue service.  Operating as we do now, demonstrates limited understanding and constrains scope leading to overly restricted thinking at a time when really what’s needed is a clear “Four Nations Inter-Departmental” fire safety strategy.
    
The white paper points to the absurdity of the omission of an integrated UK Fire Strategy in the built environment. Two separate policy areas, construction and occupation, are managed within two separate government departments, when it is self-evident that they must be coordinated if success is to be achieved.
    
Likewise, a strategic oversight is required to ensure every priority does not ignore how it may impact on fire. The current example of the fire safety implications of the ‘Green Agenda’ driving zero carbon targets to meet climate challenges is a case in point leading to broader questions like: “Have the implications for fire been addressed, examined and understood? Or are we again expecting risk to be absorbed, mitigated and controlled following experience?”
    
Having a coherent strategy that aligns with national and devolved government, coordinates policy and action, departments and stakeholders, research and observations, technologies and materials is seen as fundamental if the UK wishes to be ‘a first nation’ in controlling fire. Renewing and realigning the UK’s perspective on fire is critical to that ambition.
    
Using what expertise exists is also crucial to translating this complex area of overwhelming detail into a clear and understandable plan. Fire has a fragmented technical sector with many users operating in different disciplines across multiple fields.
    
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry has provided a powerful insight into this sector through the optic of a single event, it has created a clearer view of the availability of the wide range of expertise capable of supporting policy in the fire environment. It has also illustrated, as the example of the available expertise and knowledge of material behaviour under test conditions shows, how despite having pertinent information around fire test performance, this might fail to be communicated, translated and escalated to influence important action because of commercial confidentiality.
    
Conversely, a progressive strategy to reduce the size of central government, restating its central role as final arbiter rather than leader and promoter of action, has had an impact. Government expertise has been deliberately reduced, transferring responsibility closer to the actions of implementation and decision making, without prior assessment that appropriate and suitable capability and capacity exists; leading to a question of whether parliamentarians engaged on public safety, through scrutiny and legislative oversight, are in turn well advised.
    
It is incumbent upon everyone in the built environment to avoid further complacency and address problems we know continue to exist and may evolve in future. Industry is well placed to understand these problems, and just as importantly, some of their solutions.
    
Engaging positively and supportively with government, the Federation believes a National Fire Strategy is the most effective way to achieve the shared aim of a fire safe society. The desire is to have a road map to deliver an effective and resilient fire safety agenda aligned within a secure and sustainable environment and that requires collective actions in both industry and government. The fire sector can use its unrivalled knowledge and experience to define the route to better fire safety.
    
Moving forward, the Federation has identified three areas for immediate priority: raising competency; mitigating fire risk in modular and other buildings using mass timber; together with partnering the construction sector to raise awareness of fire risk from innovative new products and methodologies. Work has already begun to establish industry working groups in these areas and develop proposals for government.
    
The Federation invites opinion, views and partners to consider and comment on its proposition that the UK needs a national fire safety strategy; one that enables industry and government cooperate to achieve agreed priorities for success.