High Rise Flats: Fire Prevention
(asked on 21st June 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if the Government will review the fire safety regulations to ensure that highrise accommodation is required to have sprinklers.
Building regulation guidance provides that newly built high rise accommodation, over 30 metres, is constructed with a sprinkler system.
The Department wrote to all social housing providers in 2013 following 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 its response to the Coroner’s report into the Lakanal House Fire – a copy of which can be found at:
An independent expert panel has been set up to provide advice to the Government on any immediate measures needed to make buildings safe following the Grenfell Tower fire. The panel will be led by Sir Ken Knight, former London Fire Commissioner and former Government Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser. It will consider safety measures, policies, inspection and regulation, taking account of both the Grenfell Tower fire and ongoing fire safety inspections. It will look at any immediate action required to ensure public confidence that everything possible is being done to make all public and private buildings safe as quickly as possible.