To be honest, Ian, and I too am being serious, as an ex senior officer in fire safety, the story will appall you. The overview of the story is this. Our second largest client (by annual fee spend) want to have a staff alarm arrangement to reduce false alarms. We tell them they must get approval of fire authority. An I/O visits and does a detailed inspection of the building and its management. No arguement there; a building should not have a staff alarm unless there is a good standard of management. He asks to see the FRA and is shown the document that we prepared for the client. The format has been seen by CACFOA (as it then was) and agreed as suitable and sufficient. The same FRS have seen our format many many times and always agreed it was suitable and suffcient. It has also been specifically agreed by many other FRSs across the land.
The I/O looks at it and tells them it is NOT a FRA. Note that he gives no reason for this, makes no specific criticisms, does not say that, well it is not quite suitable and sufficent. With an arrogance typical of the particular FRS, he tells the client that it is not even an FRA and that, therefore, they are in breach of legislation by failing to have ANY FRA and that they would be getting a ''long letter'' from the FRS. As an aside he helpfully tells the client that they do not need consultants to carry out FRAs as anyone with common sense can do it. Understandably, the building manager wonders what the hell is going on and writes to the client's Director of Health and Safety asking if, given the I/O's comments (after all the FRS are the ''experts'' arent they???) they need to use our services any more. If the Director had not had a lot of faith in us as she happens to have, and had she not known what the particular FRS are like, we could have lost a major client, possibly resulting in redundancy of at least one consultant, all because of this I/O.
The I/O sends what is effectively the old minded to type letter and schedule, with the very basic error that they are in breach of the FP(W) Regs by failing to have a FRA (when of course, even if it would be correct to say there was none, the breach would be Management Regs), calling up incorrect clauses, and stating that there was no FRA, giving them a few weeks to get one done.
When challenged on the phone as to why he had done all this the only explanation he could offer was that he THOUGHT it was not an FRA. When asked what training he had done on the subject of the Regs and FRAs he stated he was searching the Internet to find some as he had not really had any, other than a little bit just after the Regs came in in 1997. The FRA was sent to the FRS Policy Group and to the guy's ADO, none of whom could find anything wrong with it. The ADO tried to huff, puff and bluster about well maybe what the I/O meant was that they would need to act on the FRA, which is bull****, bearing in mind that we are sitting on a bit of paper signed (to use the words of Chaimberlain) by Mr Hitler, stating there was NO FRA and that the client was in breach of legislation.
We instruct solicitors to take action against the FRS on the basis that much time has been taken up at our end sorting this mess out, unless they agree to pay a relatively small fee for the hours of time wasted. We also made it clear that this is not an action we would take simply say because the FRS say a door is needed somewhere and it proves not to be the case. Our case is that the wreckless action of the I/O was so fundamentally flawed that our costs should be met by the FRS. We were prepared to go to County Court and intended to subpoena the I/O to explain his actions to the Court and the training he had been given to enforce fire safety legislation. The sum we sought was very small, but it was a point of principle.
As it happens the FRS settled by paying the requisite amount.
There are several things I would wish to stress, Ian for the purpose of objectivity.
1. The DO to whom this sorry tale was referred has written stating that the Authority accepts that the FRA is suitable and sufficient, that the I/O now acknowledges that he ought to have recognized it as such, and stating that the schedule would be withdrawn.
2. The DO acknowledges that this has caused us embarrassment for which he ''apologises unresevedly''.
3. The ADO offered to visit the premises personally to apologise and explain to the client.
4. There is little more one could expect of the FRS, who have, therefore, done all they could subsequent to this whole debacle.
5. I say again that we would never take action to seek recompense over normal disputes in respect of adequacy of fire precautions,etc as such a case wouldin any case almost certainly be contrary to public policy as to win would make enforcing officers unnecessarily cautious. It was the very fundamental nature of the issue that we felt was a point of principle.
6. In fairness to FRSs, it is my honest belief, having worked with many FRSs in training I/Os in fire risk assessment, that, certainly in other FRSs with whom we have experience, this simply would not happen, as enforcement is fair, reasonable, measured and non-aggressive.
7. The issue is primarily about training. Sadly, it seem to be from the outside that CFS is sexy, Political Correctness is all the rage, IPDS is new and exciting, but fire safety is becoming a poor relation in FRSs, and I fear that this will get worse with the RRO, not better. And the frightening paradox is that, come the RRO, there will be a need for more enforcement, not less, but it will need to be competent.
If you want sight of the papers, or the FRS letter to us, let me know.
