UK BUSINESSES are placing employee and customer safety at risk by failing to test their fire safety systems in order to meet legal requirements. According to a detailed survey conducted by fire safety specialist JLA, 20% of businesses only test their fire alarm systems once every year, while 40% have not given all of their staff members training on the common causes of false fire alarms in the workplace.

[Read More]

ON WEDNESDAY 19 January in the House of Commons, Andy Slaughter (the Labour Party’s MP for Hammersmith and Shadow Solicitor General) tabled proposed amendments to the Building Safety Bill that would see mandatory five-yearly electrical safety checks introduced for both the social rented units and leaseholder units within a given high-rise residential building. The move has been strongly supported by Electrical Safety First, the campaigning charity that aims to reduce deaths and injuries caused by electrical issues in UK homes.

[Read More]

C. S. TODD & Associates Ltd has been commissioned by the Home Office to produce new guides – and also update existing guidance documents – as part of the latter’s programme to revise and update guidance notes relating to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

[Read More]

A FURTHER seven Fire Standards are currently in development by the Fire Standards Board. These include the subjects of Safeguarding, Fire Investigation, Emergency Preparedness and Resilience and Data, as well as three Leadership Fire Standards.

[Read More]

THE GOVERNMENT has reset its approach to building safety with a bold new plan to protect leaseholders and make wealthy developers and companies pay to fix the cladding crisis. However, the way forward – in which Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Communities and Housing targets the sum of circa £4 billion to replace combustible cladding on buildings of heights between 11 metres and 18 metres – may not be sufficient in financial terms. That’s the view of Mike Robinson, CEO of the British Safety Council.

[Read More]

THE FIRE Industry Association (FIA), itself a major provider of fire safety training, has announced the acquisition of Igneo’s market fire safety platform. The latter’s industry initiative provides the first independent fire safety portal as a single point of reference for compliance and competence in the UK’s fire safety industry.

[Read More]

IN ITS role as the UK’s national standards body, the British Standards Institution (BSI) has published a new Code of Practice for the fire risk appraisal of external wall construction and cladding of existing multi-storey and multi-occupied residential buildings.

[Read More]

THE FIRE Brigades Union (FBU) has written to US counterparts with an offer of collaborative working focused on building safety campaigning. This move follows on from the Bronx apartment fire that occurred on Sunday 9 January and, of course, the Grenfell Tower disaster of June 2017.

[Read More]

THE BUILDING Engineering Services Association (BESA) has praised Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Communities and Housing) for “taking the initiative” in trying to address the growing cladding scandal, but also warns that the Government’s new plan for ramping up building safety “would not completely solve the problem”.

[Read More]

THE BOARD of Directors at European Trade Association Fire Safe Europe has appointed Eugenio Quintieri to be the organisation’s new managing director. Quintieri succeeds Juliette Albiac in the role.

[Read More]