Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when the Government plans to decide whether sprinkler systems should be a mandatory requirement for high-rise buildings.

The Department wrote to all social housing providers in 2013, encouraging them to act on the recommendations in a Coroner’s report into firefighter deaths which occurred at Shirley Towers in Southampton in April 2010. That letter encouraged providers to consider the retrofitting of sprinklers in older residential tower blocks. The Department then reinforced the content of that letter in it’s response to the Coroner’s report into the Lakanal House Fire – a copy of which can be found at

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/205567/Annex_B_-_SoS_DCLG_Rule_43_response.pdf

We are committed to looking at wider issues following the Grenfell Tower fire and this work will now need to be informed by any recommendations that the independent inquiry makes.

We have appointed an expert panel to advise us on immediate steps to be taken following the Grenfell Tower fire, and will act on those recommendations where necessary. The role of the expert panel and the advice already given is set out in a note published last week at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/explanatory-note-on-safety-checks-and-testing