Fire Safety: School Buildings

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today on the important issue of fire safety in schools. I thank the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) for securing the debate. As he said, yesterday was national burn awareness day and it is fitting that that should be followed by this debate.

Hon. Members may not be aware of the 2004 overhaul of fire safety laws for public buildings in Scotland. It followed the tragedy at Rosepark nursing home in Lanarkshire, where 14 elderly residents died when a fire broke out in a linen cupboard. A fatal accident inquiry found that the deaths could have been avoided and that the lack of sprinklers could have been a contributory factor. A key finding of the inquiry was that although a fitted sprinkler system would not have extinguished the fire, it would probably have rendered conditions in all areas tenable for at least an hour. It is regrettable that such a tragic incident should ever occur, but it is impossible to say how many lives have been saved by the robust building regulation legislation that has followed. In 2010, the regulations were amended to include schools in the statutory list of buildings that must be fitted with automatic fire suppression systems. The extension of the legislation in Scotland is incredibly welcome.

One need only think of the Glasgow School of Art for another example of the sheer destructive power of fire. Large portions of the iconic buildings were gutted by a major fire in May last year. News of the fire spread fast, much like the fire itself, and in very little time tens of thousands of people were glued to live coverage of flames engulfing the building, which had quickly become an inferno. It was a shocking reminder of the raw, elemental power of fire. Fortunately, and remarkably, the incident claimed no casualties, although there was extensive and irreversible damage. Unable to contain the fast-spreading flames, staff sounded an evacuation of the building. An intended fire-suppression system for the building had not yet been completed. It is clear that that would significantly have slowed the progress of that fast-spreading blaze.

In Scotland and Wales, sprinklers in schools are now standard; yet only 1,400 of the 30,000 schools in Britain are fitted with them—less than 5%. Most of the 1,400 are schools in Scotland and Wales. It is a pretty shocking disparity, but I am here today to urge action rather than to criticise. Something that is the norm in the devolved Administrations can become a target in England and a benchmark to strive for. The approach at the moment often seems to be to look at cost versus benefit, but what price can be placed on the lives and safety of children? As a mother, I know parents want peace of mind when they send their children to school in the morning. The safety of children should be paramount and we should not wait for a major accident involving loss of life before the Government will act.

The proactive approach taken in Scotland and Wales should be emulated in England. The current situation whereby 65% of new schools are not fitted with sprinklers is not acceptable to me, and I am sure that it is not acceptable to the parents who send their children to those schools every morning. If there were greater public awareness of the fact that only one in three new schools built in England possesses automatic fire suppression systems, I think that there would be an outcry from parents. The current situation is something of a safety lottery, and it falls below what any reasonable Government should strive for. Although there has not been significant loss of life in a school fire in Britain, chief fire officers have identified some near misses. We simply cannot adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

Cost cannot be a prohibitive factor either. In fact, in the long term, fitting sprinklers can save money. In the unfortunate event of a fire, sprinklers can significantly impede the progress of flames, so rebuilding is likely not to take as long as it would otherwise and the extra costs incurred for temporary measures will not be as great. Commercial insurers recognise the value of sprinkler systems in schools and provide lower insurance premiums to schools that have them. It is estimated that the cost of installing automatic sprinkler protection can be recouped in 10 to 12 years, so over the lifetime of a school building, the fitting of a fire suppression system can be cost-effective. Short-term cuts should not cloud our long-term thinking: fire suppression should be viewed as an asset to schools, because it can protect lives in addition to bringing down running costs.

I would like the Minister to take on board and respond to the points I have made. I would like to know what regulation, if any, Her Majesty’s Government are currently considering for fire suppression systems in schools. I echo the sentiments that others have expressed during this debate and I ask that a Minister from the Department for Education attend a meeting of the all-party group on fire safety rescue. Finally, I would like to ask the Minister whether the Department will consider keeping records of new schools built with and without automatic fire suppression protection.