Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Fire Safety Matters

2023 has been another extremely busy and productive year for the fire industry, with the Fire Safety (England) Regulations being a keen focus of attention when they came into force in January.

Fast forward to June and we ran the second edition of the Fire and Security Matters Awards at the CBS Arena in Coventry. Entries for the 2024 awards scheme (for which the Headline Sponsor is BAFE) are already open. Check out the categories online now and submit your entries. The deadline for entries is 14 April, with the ceremony taking place on 12 June, once again at the CBS Arena.

The inaugural edition of Fire Safety Matters Live took place at the CBS Arena in Coventry on 15 June and proved to be a huge success. There were excellent Continuing Professional Development (CPD) presentations courtesy of representatives from the Building Safety Regulator at the Health and Safety Executive, Apollo Fire Detectors, Advanced, Tio Fire Safety, Carrier Fire-EMS, Siderise, Simpro Software, FFE, the Fire Industry Association (FIA), the Institute of Fire Safety Managers (which also ran its latest Technical Conference in parallel) and Milford & Marah.

Business Publication of the Year

Last month, Fire Safety Matters was named Business Publication of the Year at the Professional Publishers Association’s (PPA) Independent Publisher Awards 2023. A fabulous achievement by the team!

Taking place on 24 November at etc. Venues in London’s Houndsditch, the prestigious PPA Independent Publisher Awards featured no fewer than 25 categories. Fire Safety Matters was a shortlisted finalist in four of them: Business Publication of the Year, Media Brand of the Year, Commercial Partnership of the Year (in conjunction with the Fire Industry Association for the FIA Guide to the UK Fire Safety Industry 2022-2023) and Event of the Year (in recognition of the inaugural edition of Fire Safety Matters Live).

Having triumphed in the Commercial Partnership of the Year Award at this event in 2022, and then subsequently picking up a Special Commendation at the main PPA Awards 2023 in the Media Brand of the Year category, Fire Safety Matters has now won what is arguably the most prestigious accolade that could be bestowed upon a business-to-business magazine.

FIA Guide to the UK Fire Safety Industry

Earlier this month, we published the third edition of the Fire Industry Association (FIA) Guide to the UK Fire Safety Industry. The 2023-2024 publication (which is published as a joint venture in conjunction with the FIA) is now available to view online and follows on from the 2022-2023 publication.

Speaking of the online domain, Fire Safety Matters hosted no fewer than 25 webinars during the course of 2023, with the content for each accredited for CPD thanks to our ongoing and special arrangement with FireQual. There are already further webinars planed for the early part of 2023, with the first of those sessions to be presented by FirePro UK.

Also, we have continued to bring you our hugely popular Fire Safety Matters Podcasts. We recently published Episode 35.

On top of all that, we’ve also delivered 47 editions of our very popular e-News bulletin and, of course, four editions of the print magazine itself. You can view all four print editions by accessing our digital archive. Read the November 2023 issue online now.

Developing the sector

Throughout the course of this year, we fervently hope that all of our readers, contributors and commercial partners have benefited from working with us. We do what we do for the industry and its continuing development and betterment, but we couldn’t do that without your invaluable support.

Once again, we wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.

We look forward to working with you in 2024 and we’ll see you all again on 2 January.