Fire Safety in Scotland: The Appetite to Go Further

*Photo: Cameron House Hotel (Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service)

It’s a development that also prompts a broader and more challenging question: ‘If fire risk exists across the sector, why focus only on historic hotels?’

The change follows years of scrutiny after tragic events, most notably the fire at Cameron House Hotel near Loch Lomond in 2017. That incident, which claimed two lives, remains a pivotal moment in the conversation around hotel fire safety in Scotland. It exposed vulnerabilities, raised questions about protection for sleeping occupants and led to recommendations that the Scottish Government should consider stronger fire suppression requirements in hotels created from older buildings.

Some will view this regulatory change as closing a loophole. It’s important to be clear about what this legislation does and doesn’t do. It applies specifically to historic building conversions (defined as traditional buildings). The broader reality, one that may surprise many travellers, is that hotels in Scotland (and those across the rest of the UK) are not generally required or even formally guided to install sprinkler systems.

A guest checking into a modern and purpose-built hotel tonight might think sprinklers are in place, but there’s no guarantee such systems are protecting them while they sleep. That’s a fact rarely surfaced in any hotel booking search, and one that deserves far greater public awareness.

Interesting question

This brings us neatly to an interesting question raised by the Scottish Government's own cost-benefit analysis, commissioned as part of the review of sprinkler requirements. The analysis found that non-traditional hotel constructions, which would include modern hotels, have a higher frequency of fire incidents and suffer greater degrees of physical damage in a fire episode than historic buildings. In the period studied there were less casualties.

The economic sustainability case for fire sprinkler system installation was stronger for non-traditional hotels than for the converted historic properties now covered by the new regulations.

While the difference in casualties for historic conversions was clear, it does mean we have to think about where to draw the line. If the data suggests that buildings underpinned by non-traditional construction are more susceptible to greater fire damage and greater fire area, then the logic of limiting the requirement to older buildings becomes, on the face of it, one that’s about ‘escapability’, with one type of premises prone to more damage, but perhaps with a better means of escape.

The regulatory response has been shaped by tragedies, but the evidence-led view of where risk actually resides across the entire hotel estate means that we need to keep an eye on this situation and hope no new tragedy strikes a non-traditional hotel.

Driving progress

That’s not to diminish the importance of what has been achieved. The Cameron House Hotel fire (the aftermath is pictured above), and the tragedy at the New County Hotel in Perth six years later, have energised progress on fire safety.

However, given that there are upwards of 400 hotel fires recorded annually across Britain (ie more than one fire every single day across a cohort of around 9,500 hotels), the evidence suggests that the economic sustainability case for making sprinklers a norm across new hotels remains compelling for the business owner and, it must be said, largely unaddressed.

Scotland has taken a step in the right direction. The question now is whether the industry and Government have the appetite to go further, viewing the protection of every hotel guest as a baseline rather than an optional extra.

Iain Cox is Chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance (www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org)