The fire authorities are NOT enforcing or auditing effectively. And at the moment the role of the enforcers in auditing a tiny sample of premises in a prescriptive way is an even smaller part of the whole fire safety equation than fire risk assessment by a competent person. Things need to be improved.
Not sure I agree with that.That is too much of a sweeping statement.
Can you qualify why Fire & Rescue Authorities are not auditing / enforcing effectively and how they are enforcing prescriptively?
What happens in one corner of the country may not reflect what happens elsewhere Kurnal and its important to recognise the part IRMP plays in targetting fire safety enforcement.
Re-inspections have and always will be based on priority, type of premises, and the severity of the failings found originally.
There aren't sufficient resources to re-inspect everything, and there is no need to re-inspect everything all the time anyway.
Should we be saying that Fire Authorities , for example, must re-inspect all care homes on their patch once every twelve months?
And if you do start re-inspecting one type of premises such as care homes would they be up in arms and say they are being unfairly picked on?
So here's a simple suggestion - the RP is responsible for fire safety so why don't we let them get on with it, and lets make sure the enforcing authority doesn't get involved until there has been an injury or death - vis a vis the HSE approach.
Apparently responsibility for fire safety rests with the punter and those naughty enforcing authorities are still too way too prescriptive.
So what do we want here? Something along the lines of those Approved Inspectors for Building Regulations (with all the trappings, and, dare I say it, profit driven enforcement, that comes with it?)
Should we have our register of competent risk assessors who will guide the RP in the right direction and ensure the RP follows all of their recommendations to the letter? (As we know every RP will of course implement all recommendations made by the risk assessor won't they children?!)
And can we have a truly workable independent third party accreditation scheme for fire risk assessors anyway? (considering the comments one assessor made to me in private about the current accreditation schemes out there being riddled with traps and pitfalls, and, shock horror, skull duggery, back stabbing et al)
I do agree however Kurnal that there are folks out there who want their cake and eat it. Alas thats quite impossible!
You are of course right and it was too much of a sweeping statement made in the heat of an argument. Yes I can justify to an extent but only in qualitative terms because as we all know all the former OMPIS and other statistics that measured the performance of fire safety departments have been scrapped. My comments are based on staffing levels and workloads in the past, a knowledge of what can be achieved based on experience having managed several fire safety area offices and, looking far outside my own little corner of the UK how inspection teams have been decimated and at the same time and quite rightly their role has diversified in gathering information around a much broader perception of risk.
We never had enough resources to support reinspection program under the old legislation and that only covered designated premises. So now they cannot afford but to target specific high-risk premises and the definition of risk must be dynamic based on fire statistics and demographic factors as well as the traditional sleeping risks etc. Personally I support the concept of making the person who creates the risk responsible and accountable for managing that risk and I believe it is the only practicable way forward, driven by robust enforcement.
Fire authorities do need to use targeting and do need to find a way to target those premises where compliance is low. Perceptions of high-risk or low risk, sleeping or process risk are irrelevant, if we focus on the level of compliance the risk will look after itself. Compliance is inevitably low where fires occur, another good reason for keeping enforcement with the fire authority and making sure the operations and enforcement are tightly joined with good communications and rapid investigation. Then you can hit them hard with a robust investigation that will stand up in court and set an example to others. On the other hand compliance is much more likely to be high where the responsible person has taken the trouble to appoint competent assistance in fulfilling their responsibilities. Hence my original suggestion.
I fully realise that for a range of reasons the action plan within a risk assessment may be ignored but by the same token if it's written down and the responsible person knows about it then they can have no defence if things go pear shaped, and would be lambs to the slaughter in court.
Speyside suggests that buildings should be fully certificated. This takes us further than the full circle back to the old legislation and beyond and I cannot ever see there being appetite to introduce legislation of this nature. I can see potential for it in the private sector, perhaps the blue-chip organisations in conjunction with their insurers, and maybe such a scheme would be universally accepted by fire authorities and a light touch enforcement applied.
