Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing the debate. He has been a magnificent voice leading on fire safety issues in Parliament. If his voice had been listened to over the years, we would not be in the powerless state that we are at the moment.

I congratulate and thank all the members of the all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group. It is a wonderful group and we speak with one voice: we want sprinklers to be installed on a mandatory basis in certain buildings. If we had been listened to at the outset, there would not have been the Lakanal disaster and there would not have been the Grenfell disaster. I am in absolute despair: Ministers come and go, and yet the advice remains constant from officials and others. That advice is absolutely wrong. It has cost lives.

The debate is pertinent because changes to building regulations approved document B guidance are currently being considered following the Grenfell Tower disaster. That was nearly two years ago, but I am sure it only seems like yesterday to the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad).

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I endorse everything that the hon. Gentleman says about the work of the APPG. Is the difference between us and the Government not that we have been willing to listen to expert opinion, and to take that into account when deciding the appropriate way forward? Surely, this is the time to listen to expert opinion.

[Sir David Amess]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have the privilege of not just one, not just two, but three former fire Ministers here today. It is about time that the present Government listened to their expertise on the subject. I cannot think of any meeting where the APPG has not had an item on the agenda about automatic fire sprinkler protection.

We should never have got to the position of the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy, especially after the warnings and recommendations of the coroner at the Lakanal House fire inquest in 2013, and the rule 43 letter to the Secretary of State. We have all the correspondence about what the APPG was trying to do at the time.

All Governments of all colours have failed us. On 4 July 2017, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), said that

“we may have to confront an awkward truth. That over many years and perhaps against the backdrop of, as data shows, a reduced risk in terms of fire, in terms of number of incidents and deaths, that maybe as a system some complacency has crept in.”

Well, I think that is what Dame Judith Hackitt feels about the situation, and we will just have to see how that pans out. Claims of complacency could never be aimed at the APPG.

In 2012, the Building Research Establishment updated its 2006 research into the cost-benefit analysis of installing residential fire sprinklers and concluded that sprinklers are cost-effective for most blocks of purpose-built flats, all residential care homes, including those with single bedrooms, and traditional bedsit-type houses in multiple occupation, where there are at least six bedsit units per building and the costs are shared. The APPG has consistently asked why the Government have not reflected those changes in its guidance in approved document B. The intransigence is absolutely unacceptable.

I say again: the advice has been totally wrong. The APPG, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the London Fire Brigade, the Fire Protection Association, the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Fire Sector Federation, the Association of British Insurers and many others cannot all be wrong on this issue, but the advisers are still giving the wrong advice.

In March 2013, the Southwark coroner issued a rule 43 letter to the Secretary of State for the then Department of Communities and Local Government following the Lakanal House inquest, which stated:

“Evidence adduced at the inquests indicated that retro fitting of sprinkler systems in high rise residential buildings might now be possible at lower cost than had previously been thought to have been the case, and with modest disruption to residents. It is recommended that your Department encourage providers of housing in high rise residential buildings containing multiple domestic premises to consider the retro fitting of sprinkler systems.”

The response from DCLG was lamentable. It said that

“any fire safety measures which might need to be implemented or installed in any particular building will need to be determined primarily by a careful assessment of the life-risk to the residents and others in the building.”

We know that. The word used in the letter is “encourage”.

At the Lakanal House coroner’s inquests in March 2013, the London Fire Brigade commissioner was asked by the barrister assisting the coroner whether, if sprinklers had been installed, the lives would have been saved. The commissioner replied with an unequivocal yes. That is what happened at the inquiry. What happened at Grenfell is an absolute disgrace.

The National Fire Chiefs Council commissioned a research study by Optimal Research collecting data on five years of real fires that had occurred in the UK where sprinklers had been installed. Its findings, published last year, showed that, on 99.5% of occasions in all buildings and in 100% of occasions in flats, fires were avoided when sprinklers were installed. Sprinklers are not a panacea; they are only one of a package of measures. I am sure the Minister may make some remarks along those lines, but sprinklers can be used to make properties safe from fire.

Let me close by giving an estimated progress report on the retrofitting of automatic fire sprinkler protection in residential tower blocks. I am advised by organisations that manufacture automatic fire sprinkler systems that an estimated 1,000 towers have commenced or committed to installing sprinklers in existing tower blocks as a consequence of the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. Already, Wales and Scotland are much further ahead in regulating for automatic fire sprinklers in their built environment. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, who is a good and wise man: this nonsense can no longer go on and we will not accept it. We want action on this, and we want sprinklers to be installed retrospectively, particularly in all new school buildings.