Fire Safety and Sprinkler Systems

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (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) on securing this debate. Given that the call for evidence on approved document B of the building regulations ends on Friday, this debate is exceptionally timely, and I hope that the Minister has listened carefully to the wise words of the secretary of the all-party fire safety rescue group. Hon. Members are clearly as one on the need for change, and that case has been made conclusively this morning.

The need for urgency percolated through everybody’s speeches. The hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said that this “nonsense” must not go on, and the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) asked whether property is more important than people’s lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) said that Grenfell 2 is “in the post”, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said that we should consider the cost and that this issue is a “no-brainer”. The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said that we have kicked the can down the road for too long. We heard sensible arguments from all those who contributed this morning, including on the important need to protect firefighters as well as residents, and the fact that modern sprinkler systems can be installed at less cost and with less damage if they need to be used.

In 2019, we find ourselves in the sorry position of knowing that our fire safety and sprinkler regulations are woefully inadequate, and almost two years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, we are still waiting for the Government to act. Seventy-two people died in the Grenfell fire, and that fire and its aftermath exposed a litany of fire safety failures across thousands of buildings. Hundreds of blocks are draped in flammable Grenfell-style ACM cladding, and many more are covered in other types of flammable material that is as yet untested. There are tens of thousands of faulty fire doors, and a huge discrepancy in the provision of sprinklers. We also know that warnings came years earlier. The coroner’s investigation into the Lakanal House fire recommended in 2013 that sprinklers be retrofitted in social housing, and similar calls were made by members of the all- party fire safety rescue group in the same year. In 2016, a building regulations review was promised by the Government but never delivered. The London Fire Brigade stated:

“It is deeply concerning that on the two occasions in recent years when the Government has looked at reviewing sprinklers legislation or guidance it has been in the wrong direction—seeking to weaken rather than strengthen it.”

As has been said many times this morning, no one has died in a fire where a sprinkler system was installed, yet in England sprinklers are a legal requirement only in new residential blocks that are more than 30 metres tall.

Labour party research found that more than 96% of tall council tower blocks in London do not have sprinklers—a huge number. Although 3% of those blocks are now looking to install sprinklers, the vast majority have no plans to do so because they do not have funding. Installing sprinklers at Grenfell would have cost a few hundred thousand pounds. Croydon’s fully retrofitted stock post-Grenfell cost £10 million, and Birmingham has projected a cost of approximately £30 million to retrofit more than 200 blocks. Despite repeated calls from local authorities and the Prime Minister’s promise that the Government will do “whatever it takes” to keep our people safe, no funding has been provided by central Government for sprinklers. We do not pretend that these changes come without cost—of course they have a cost, but what is the price of safety? As we have heard, the rules in Scotland and Wales are more comprehensive, and a multitude of experts have called on the Government to reduce the height requirement for sprinklers, and to extend that requirement to other buildings.

The problem goes wider. Over new year, the Shurgard fire exposed our backward laws and regulations on fire safety across the board. Shurgard operates in Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, where sprinklers would have been required by law in a warehouse the size of the one in Croydon. In this country, however, there are no such requirements, and the property of nearly 2,000 people got burned.

I do not need to list the individuals and organisations calling for change. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith listed RIBA’s excellent four pillars for reform, including a requirement for sprinklers and automatic fire suppression systems in all existing residential buildings above 18 metres. In addition to the questions raised today, will the Minister listen to RIBA and implement its sensible set of policies? Will the Government extend their ban on flammable cladding to schools, hospitals and care homes, and introduce a requirement for sprinklers in schools and hospitals? Will they consider a fire safety fund that is available to help council and housing association landlords with the costs of retrofitting sprinklers and other urgent remedial work? Two years on from the Grenfell fire, will the Government understand the need for urgent action, get a grip on the situation and act, so that we can hold our heads up high and say that we have done what we could to stop such a tragedy happening again? There has been much talk in other places of the “Malthouse compromise”. If the Minister were to act today to prevent future deaths, we would call it anything he wanted, and we would thank him for it.