Is This What Regulatory Success Looks Like?

Photograph: Business Sprinkler Alliance

According to reports, 53 residents were evacuated after the fire took hold and spread rapidly through the residential building located in Bro, North West of Stockholm. Thankfully, no-one was injured, yet the fire was a predictable scenario. Despite the outcome, the building is claimed to comply with the country’s national Building Regulations. Once again, we are left with an uncomfortable outcome: predictable fire behaviour, total building loss and significant disruption to many lives.

Earlier in the year, I watched a presentation on work conducted by the Netherlands Institute of Public Safety (NIPV) that was based on a series of fires that had spread more extensively than anticipated. Fires had penetrated building fabrics, rendering the structures unusable. These spreading fires displaced multiple people from their homes. Again, it was claimed that the buildings involved were compliant with regulations. The image from Stockholm would not have been out of place in the presentation.

Sadly, these fires align with recent fires seen in the UK. On 1 June, a fire spread into the timber frame of a low-rise residential block in Andover, Hampshire, duly destroying 19 flats. In a similar fire four years earlier, 19 families were displaced when a fire destroyed a block of flats in Arborfield, Berkshire. Both fire scenarios were readily foreseeable, but the outcome led to complete loss of the accommodation.

This is not about construction techniques. It’s about outcomes. Once again, both buildings were claimed to be compliant with the relevant UK Building Regulations at the time of the build.

Unacceptable outcomes

From Stockholm to Andover, the story is the same. A foreseeable fire leading to the total loss of a building followed by a claim that this is a regulatory success. Put simply, this doesn’t pass the smell test. Why are these fire incidents labelled as ‘successes’?

This definition of success is focused on life safety as the essential outcome we would expect. I agree. After all, it’s one of the prime jobs of Government to protect its citizens. However, I’m not sure that allowing a building to be completely lost once that’s achieved is an acceptable outcome in all cases. It’s too narrow a view and overlooks the wider social impact from the trauma experienced by residents to the financial costs of rebuilding, the burden placed on local services and the environmental impact of demolition and reconstruction.

The challenge is not just technical. It’s also cultural. Are we willing to redefine what success means when it comes to fire to acknowledge resilience? Or is it simply easier and cheaper to accept total building loss as the price that Governments believe society is willing to pay?

From conversations across Europe, it’s clear that expectations are shifting. People increasingly assume their homes – and, by extension, their lives – are protected by more than a narrow reading of the minimum. There’s an underlying expectation of buildings to be resilient. Claiming victory because lives were spared can be appropriate when dealing with a major fire. However, a modest fire that grows to make a whole building unusable leads to confusion over what regulations deliver as outcomes.

The narrative of ‘success’ feels like a regulatory sleight of hand. More have the belief that they should account not just for evacuation, but also for the preservation of buildings.

Combination of techniques

A better outcome is possible through a combination of techniques. We know that systems such as sprinklers can drastically reduce the scale and impact of fires. We know that designing for resilience is not only technically achievable, but already proven by specific actors in other sectors, such as logistics and industrial premises. We need the expansion of that thinking to reach places where the impacts are felt across broader groups and the local community impacts are greater.

At the Business Sprinkler Alliance, we continue to advocate for a more holistic view of fire safety and one that values protection of life, property and continuity. The examples from the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands all point to the same conclusion: now is the time to raise the bar and start building multi-family homes genuinely offering that resilience.

*Further information on the Business Sprinkler Alliance can be accessed online at www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org