Redevelopment plans submitted for Beechmere site “but sprinkler gap still isn’t closed”

In August 2019, fire tore through the building (a timber-framed, unsprinklered extra care facility housing 132 apartments for elderly and disabled residents). Thankfully, no lives were lost thanks to a swift evacuation procedure, but more than 150 residents at the complex lost their homes and, with them, their independence and sense of community.

An application has now been lodged with Cheshire East Council by developer Avantage. The documentation outlines plans for an extra care building that would replace the original complex and play host to 75 apartments, with design work undertaken by Cassidy & Ashton. The site has stood empty since the fire.

The replacement proposal is smaller in scale than the building it replaces: three storeys in a U-shape with a mixture of one and two-bedroom apartments, communal lounges, a dining area, a well-being suite and other shared facilities. It will be brick built with timber-effect cladding.

The application document includes a 30-page fire strategy confirming that sprinklers will be installed throughout. In fact, those sprinklers are part of the thinking for a ‘defend in place’-style approach for this building.

Lessons learned

The provision of sprinklers is genuinely good news, and a sign that the lessons of 2019 have shaped this design, but the Business Sprinkler Alliance believes it’s worth being clear about why sprinklers are proposed for this particular building. They are there because the owner has chosen to include them and not because they’re required by regulatory guidance.

Despite this, and other similar blazes in extra care facilities, the fire safety guidance still hasn’t changed for these types of buildings.

Beechmere remains an unusual Case Study precisely because it sits in a regulatory grey area. It’s specialised housing destined to be marketed to older, often less mobile residents, yet because it doesn’t meet the legal definition of a Care Home, it falls outside the recent changes to Approved Document B that have made sprinklers mandatory in new Care Home developments.

It would also remain outside of the recent 2026 consultation on Approved Document B, only requiring additional detection systems.

Subsequent to the 2019 fire, Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service called for sprinklers to be fitted across care facilities of this kind. Approved Document B guidance, however, only requires generic fire protection measures for buildings like Beechmere, not sprinklers specifically. The two are not the same thing. The gap between them is exactly where this latest development sits.

The Business Sprinkler Alliance has made this argument before and, what’s more, will keep on making it. Vulnerability does not stop at the threshold or change because of a name. A resident of an extra care scheme may well face challenges in terms of mobility, age or their ability to evacuate quickly in a fire. Classification should not be the deciding factor in whether a building receives the protection that could save lives.

Regulatory gap

Iain Cox, chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance, stated: “It’s encouraging to see sprinklers integrated into the proposals for the Beechmere replacement facility from the start, and credit to the developer for that, but this building is still going up in a regulatory gap that we've been highlighting for years. Extra care housing is not legally required to have sprinklers, only generic fire protection. Beechmere showed precisely what can go wrong without them. It shouldn’t take individual developers doing the right thing voluntarily for that risk to be addressed. It should be a requirement.”

The Beechmere site is finally moving towards redevelopment, but until extra care housing is brought within scope of sprinkler requirements, the vulnerability will remain and we will continue to question why there’s a difference.

*Further information is available online at www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org