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FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Fire Safety => Topic started by: jokar on April 30, 2007, 06:17:15 PM
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I have heard today that the above FRS is undertaking a reactive policy only to the RR(FS)O in that they are responding after an incident has occurred and have no proactive policy. Does anyone know if this is correct?
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This would be the expected approach by a run down organisation. The reason behind FP W/P Regs is to remove the cost and responsibility for employee safety from the publc service and place it on the owner/employer. There is the slight possibility that high life risk buildings may be policed.
Some time is the future there will be a tragic incident involving multi fatalities and the type of premises concerned will be the subject of new legislation where certification and policing by a public safety body will be required.
Remember Woolworths, Flixborough, The Stardust Night Club, Mayesfield Leisure Centre etc.
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Nealy...
As a retired FPO....your absolutely right.....the RRO is a disaster of tragic proportions waiting to happen!
Conqueror
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All new legislation is under H & S, their approach is always reactive rather than proactive
The role of FRS is now prosecution of survivors!!!
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No, it will be the prosecution of the person who has failed in his responsiblity to protect relevant persons.
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Any advance on a Care home being first in the dock then? Unsuitable buildings, high dependancy residents, minimal staffing levels... loads of these throughout the UK, statistically a good chance I'd say.
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Redone: I'll raise you to a medium size Hotel
A single staircase building four, five or six floors (maybe with some crappy over-the-roof alternative). Perhaps more refugee than touristy type occupants and run by management who cannot afford an expensive fire consultant.
And in any case why bother with fire safety? The annual visit by the local FRS has gone and it now gets 'audited' every 10 (or so).
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There is nothing inherently wrong with the legislation. Indeed it presents the opportunity for massive improvements in fire safety as the hotels and care homes actually have to assess the risk the have under their roofs and act on those findings.
What is true is that the government want fire services, (operational and fire safety) to cost less. Senior managers are being remunerated at a frankly disgusting rate to push through these savings and fire safety inspectors are a much easier and less controversial taget than removing fire engines from my market town.
There is a duty to enforce and relevant sections within CLG have pushed for a proactive inspection policy...the Treasury however, couldn't care less how many people die in fires. If there is a 10% increase...so what, it is still a small fraction of road deaths or death through avoidable infection in hospitals.
The legislation would work...but only if properly and proactively enforced. Its not rocket science.
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Agree with you Val, but fires will happen, the most vunerable will perish, and some poor sole who's given their life to providing care will be punished.
Many, many small to medium homes are not cost effective on current staffing levels, increase them to be capable of implementing the emrgency plan 'without fire service intervention' they will and are closing, not being sold as a business but being demolished and flats being built, and good caring managers are leaving the industry.
I guess this is progress, we had law and order, now we have rules and regulations, but they are not realistic.
The non-prescriptive risk-based approach of the guides means that no particular method of fire protection is emphasised. It is assumed that most buildings will not conform to the guidance provided in Approved Document B to the Building Regulations in England and Wales, but that it is not reasonable to expect such buildings to undergo substantial (and expensive) new work, if the Government really cared for the most vunerable, they would have approved loans for the fitting of sprinkler systems for care homes as the USA have.
Rose Park - so what, what do residents contribute to Gordons coffers!!
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Redone: I'll raise you to a medium size Hotel
A single staircase building four, five or six floors (maybe with some crappy over-the-roof alternative). Perhaps more refugee than touristy type occupants and run by management who cannot afford an expensive fire consultant.
And in any case why bother with fire safety? The annual visit by the local FRS has gone and it now gets 'audited' every 10 (or so).
And I'll raise you a pre 5588 shopping centre.
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Rescuers tackle fire at care home
Douglas View Care Centre in Hamilton.
I know that it is very early to be making comments and I am very pleased that there seem to be no very serious injuries, but the comment below from Brian Sweeney suggests that the principle of not needing to rely on the fire and rescue service didn't work too well.
Strathclyde Fire and Rescue chief officer Brian Sweeney said: "This was a very, very serious and well-developed fire.
"About 60 people were trapped in bedrooms and corridors, some were unconscious.
I have recently been considering the 'you must not rely on the FRS approach' as it really doesn't work in practise. Could this mean that a public service may have to actually live up to its percieved role...what would the cost benefit analysis throw up? Adequate staff in all care homes or maintaining a few extra pumps on the run?
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The legislation would work...but only if properly and proactively enforced. Its not rocket science.
Got to agree with that. The whole self-compliance thing only works if as a FRS we are show that we have teeth and WILL bite. It works for the HSE, it should work for us so long as it is enforced correctly.
It has been made quite clear to me during inspections that the RRO is more well known than any older legislation. Many companies have gone and done their risk assessments with no intervention from the fire service. I am sure that anyone working for a Fire Professionals company will admit that the amount of people using them for their risk assessments has increased rapidly since the advent of the RRO?
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The legislation would work...but only if properly and proactively enforced. Its not rocket science.
Got to agree with that. The whole self-compliance thing only works if as a FRS we are show that we have teeth and WILL bite. It works for the HSE, it should work for us so long as it is enforced correctly.
It has been made quite clear to me during inspections that the RRO is more well known than any older legislation. Many companies have gone and done their risk assessments with no intervention from the fire service. I am sure that anyone working for a Fire Professionals company will admit that the amount of people using them for their risk assessments has increased rapidly since the advent of the RRO?
Civvy
Anything will work if it is policed properly. If policed properly it will be made to work. This will not.
Just to prolong my rant I would suggest that the single biggest killer in this country is cigarette smoking. If the government cared one iota they would ban it. But look at the revenue it is generating for the Chancellor.
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Nearlythere,
How will the RRO not work? Has it dropped standards somehow?
New buildings are generally now built to a good standard, so fire certification would be almost a waste of time. It is not like the RRO came in and all of a sudden people ripped out their protected staircases and alarm systems. Anywhere that used to have a certificate will already be of a reasonable standard, and now the smaller premises that were exempt have guidance on what to do.
IMO 1971 act served its purpose, WP regs started to look after the smaller end of businesses if applied properly, RRO is a natural progression and IMO it can be seen working already. If I find somewhere that is sub-standard it is my job to ensure it is brought up to a standard through enforcement/action plans etc, and I keep at it until it is safe. By the time it is all done I have decreased the risk substantially.
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Anywhere that used to have a certificate will already be of a reasonable standard, and now the smaller premises that were exempt have guidance on what to do.
Thats except in Lancashire of course where the FRS have prosecuted hotel owners with certificates and made them upgrade.
What is missing of course is that the predominance of FRS IO's is on property protection aka FPA 1971 and not on the risk that abounds in any one premises. Once we get over that hurdle then RR(FS)O will work very well.
But back to the topic question, does anyoneknow anything?
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Thats a bit contradictory Jokar.
If Lancs are prosecuting hotel owers with certificates doesn't it indicate that standards must have been pretty dire?
Or are they going beyond the guidance of the Enforcement Management Model and using legal action as a battering ram?
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Sorry, perhaps I made the point incorrectly. The comment before was that anywhere that had a certificate would be of a reasonable standard. Obviously Lancs disagreed with that and took the oportunity to enforce better standrads under RR(FS)O.
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What is missing of course is that the predominance of FRS IO's is on property protection aka FPA 1971 and not on the risk that abounds in any one premises. Once we get over that hurdle then RR(FS)O will work very well.
What point are you tring to make, is it the FPA 1971 was about property protection?
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Yes and hazard and risk were not considered as important. Thsi was based on the presumption that a fire would occur whereas RR(FS)O is about reduction of hazrads and risk to the degree that a fire should not occur.
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In any building with people and electricity there will always be a reasonable likelihood that there will be a fire. This is where many consultants and responsible persons are missing the point.
I recently was at a meeting with the head of H&S of a large organisation who were taking some exits out of use for refurbishment. He worked on the theory that they only have two alram actuations on average per year so the risk was negligible.......was he correct??.............the worrying thing is that many out there, and on here will think he is.
Many people do not understand fire risk assessment yet they are carrying them out or auditing them. A quick question for all, is a fire risk assessment about the risk of a fire occuring, or the risk of harm being caused if a fire does happen?
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Not been on here in a long time and sorry my input is minimal but the answer to this Phil is both.
P
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That being the well established definition of risk.
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Jokar,
Surely you when you carry our a FRA you must consider the most likely fire scenario, given the set of given circumstances, only then can you start to reduce the effects of such a fire. In that you must consider the occupants and how they are most likely to be effected and what is in place to such as passive and active systems.
I would never say never. I may be wrong but I thought that part of the FRA process was to consider the effects of fire and in turn minimizing them as much as possible.
P
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Yes you must consider both the likelihood and the consequences.
However, many will try and argue that if you reduce the likelihood you can reduce the protective measures. In my opinion you have to accept that a fire may occur, you can never totally remove the risk.
You can reduce the risk of the consequences, for example by reducing the fire load so that rapid fire development is not possible, then you may be able to reduce the protective measures.
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now you are contradicting yourself again phil
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Jokar how do you come to your conclusions based on what you have said?
Hazard and risk was considered important as it was one of the factors that determined travel distances. I agree we did not conduct a fire prevention inspection to reduce the likelihood of a fire occurring, prior to devising a means of escape scheme. But no matter how well you conduct an assessment to reduce fire hazards to the degree that a fire should not occur, there is always a chance that a fire will occur and there has to be satisfactory MOE.
Our only consideration was the life risk and property risk was the province of building control. We also considered passive fire protection as the best solution, because active solutions being mostly electronic were notorious unreliable but we did accept engineering solutions when it was very difficult to achieve a satisfactory solution by passive means.
I think the RR(FS)O could be an improvement on the previous legislation providing RP`s do not concentrate on achieving minimum standards instead of satisfactory standards and the enforcement is up to the job.
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A quick question for all, is a fire risk assessment about the risk of a fire occuring, or the risk of harm being caused if a fire does happen?
Risk = liklihood of event happening x consequences of event
So, to answer your qestion: both.
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Regardless of the flaws of the FPA 71, medium to larger premises were visited regularly. The building's management knew this and generally (but not always)played the game.
What worries me now is that when the more unscrupilous RPs discover the new pathetic audit frequency (or if the Merseyside story is true - audits only after the fire) then managemnt standards will slip with the inevitable consequence that fatals will follow.
Again the big boys will be OK. M&S, Hilton, BP et al will carry on employing competent advisors. Mr Patel's small corner shop will remain as now, very few being risk assessed (but few risks perhaps). But it's those medium size but high risk businesses where the problem will occur.
My main fear are standards in single staircase Hotels - the reason for the FPA 71- will become incraesingly poor with fewer FRS audits. In fact, I am seeing this regularly already.
So perhaps it's the Brigade's enforcement models which are wrong, rather than the FS(RR)O??
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Messy,
I'm finding a mixed bag really. On the one hand, we still carry out assessments for large organisations, however we are finding we are now assessing smaller SME's, who in the past have never been visited by the LFRS and have in turn done nothing in terms of fire safety, and I mean nothing.
On the plus side, these such SME's are now at least doing something, and I feel this is due to the advertising campaigns on the radio etc. It would appear the aforementioned FRS have undone some of this good work!!
Other areas of new business for us post Oct 2006 are small (7-10 room) hotels / B&B's, who again have not, in recent times, been inspected and through work with us have been advised to communicate with the LFRS. This I feel is all good and for me I would consider to be a massive shift in improving the fire safety in some of the, other wise overlooked, premises.
On the negative side, we hae carried out work of companies who have previously used other assessors, and have found the standard of assessment they have been sold, in good faith, to be nothing more than a tick sheet. As such organisations have, in their opinion, satisfied their requirment to conduct an assessment, they are essentially no better off, seeing the 3 page tick sheet as being suitable and sufficient they blindly and through no fault of their own continue to trade without carrying out some of the more basic, yet essential duties placed upon them as they see the fire risk assessment as just another sheet ofpaper to allow them trade--------its not a certificate!! it should be a working document.
I'll throw this one open to the forum and say maybe its time to run with an industry standard format, one that may only be used by a regualted assessor. Ok so PAS 79 is not the be all and end all, but its a start and surley through consultation it can be improved upon?
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Whatever methodology is utilised, the outcomes depend on the quality of the assessor. I have seen good and bad versions of PAS 79 dependent on who the assessor is. As regards some of the statements above you can in a number of circumstamces have as much passive fire safety as you like but if you don't consider the risk, explosive hazard then for an example then it will not be much ggod in the event of an incident. I am not advocating reduction only but the consideration in the RR(FS)O Article 4 starts very clearly with risk reduction and fire prevention before going on to passive fire safety measures. This view has been reinforced by the Government in the latest draft of the enforcers guide which is now out for consultation.
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now you are contradicting yourself again phil
No I'm not Wee Brian, read it again carefully.
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Just to help cloud the issue more between Certification under Fire Service Orders and H&S W/P Regs. A certificate issued under the Fire Service Order is effectively a means of escape certificate and used to be called just that in the past. The risk to occupants from the undertaking within the building was not an issue other than maybe a reduction in travel distance where an area of special fire hazard was present. The safety of persons exposed to a particular fire risk from a process was not relevant to a Fire Cetificate. On the otherhand a FRA, in addition to means of escape, does address exposure to a specific fire risk.
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With regards to the original question I have been in contact with MFRS and the following is there response.
We are taking both a reactive and proactive approach. Planning and Building Regs are being treated normally. Issues picked up by Ops crews during incidents are reactively dealt with. In relation to our re-inspection policy we are proactively working in this area, however, we are prioritising these inspections dealing with sleeping life risks first. Events etc are also being dealt with, proactively i.e. the likes of Mathew street festival, Grand National, Southport Air show and so on.
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twsutton, thank you for that response.