Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

Emma Dent Coad Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), the secretary of the all-party fire safety rescue group, on initiating and leading this extremely important debate in the light of the atrocity at Grenfell Tower nearly two years ago. I also thank the group’s chair, the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), for his leadership over the past 20 years. I was delighted to be appointed as a vice-chair last year.

I am here to make a difference. First, I will challenge the resistance shown by the Government and their advisers towards the overwhelming and compelling evidence of the benefits of fire sprinklers to property and life. Their protection extends to the firefighters and other first responders to whom so many of my community owe their lives. Those who risk their lives every day to save ours also need protection.

As one of a package of fire safety measures, sprinklers work where other measures have failed. Where installed in flats, they have controlled or extinguished 100% of fires, according to research carried out by the National Fire Chiefs Council in May 2017, a month before the fire. The Building Research Establishment’s 2012 cost-benefit analysis confirmed that sprinklers are cost-effective in most blocks of purpose-built flats and in larger blocks of converted flats. Why have the Government not implemented that seven-year-old independent report? The public inquiry is reviewing what Ministers have failed to implement since the study in 2012, the coroner’s rule 43 letter in 2013 after the Lakanal House inquest, and the NFCC research. On behalf of a bereaved community, I ask the Minister to encourage the Secretary of State to push ahead with the building regulations review and, please, to act on the findings now.

Hon. Members will be aware that, following the atrocity at Grenfell, a full technical review has been instigated of approved document B, with a call for evidence. The NFCC has responded and set out its advice. I hope that hon. Members agree that it is well placed and qualified to determine the requirements and that we should support its position. All the chief fire officers in the country are saying with one voice that that regulation needs to be improved, so I hope that the Government will listen to them, rather than waiting for the result of the review, and that hon. Members will support this interim measure to speed up the process and take action to protect lives against fire.

A change to guidance alone will not address this matter, as demonstrated by the approach to schools, which has guidance in the form of Building Bulletin 100. That document defines the expectation for automatic fire sprinklers in schools as a property protection, and saw the inclusion of sprinklers in 70% of new schools over three years, between 2007 and 2010, but that has since fallen to an alarmingly low level. The London Fire Brigade commissioner has said that it relates to very few schools now—only four of the 84 schools it has attended have had sprinklers.

The Hackitt report defines high-rise residential buildings in need of sprinklers as those of 30 metres, or 10 storeys. The most recent London Councils position is to support sprinklers in buildings of 18 metres, or six storeys—not just for new build, but also for retrofitting in existing buildings. It has asked that the work for council-owned buildings is funded by the Government in full. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Chartered Institute of Building have jointly called on the Government to require the installation of sprinklers in all new and converted residential buildings of 11 metres, or four storeys. RIBA has expressed its concern to me about the very high-rise buildings that currently have planning permission but are yet unbuilt, and what rules will apply to them.

Different rules govern fire safety in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but fire does not respect political or geographical boundaries. Councils, developers and social and private landlords need clarity from the Government and are demanding action now, without further confusion or delay. As one of the Grenfell survivors, who predicted the fire, has said, without action now, “Grenfell 2 is in the post”. The Government must not let that nightmare prediction come true, and must listen to the experts—the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Building Research Establishment, London Councils, RICS, RIBA, CIOB—and legislate now, to save lives.