From the editor - October 2018

It was great to meet so many of you at Fire Safety Scotland last month where we once again had packed seminar sessions and the speakers were pleased to see such an engaged audience. For those of you that missed the event don’t worry you can join us this month on 9-10 October for Fire Safety North at EventCity in Manchester.

Fire Safety North will play host to more than 2,500 delegates, 150 exhibitors, 30+ hours of CPD accredited seminars, the Institute of Fire Safety Managers AGM, live burn tests, live demos of how to eliminate false alarms and is co-located with Health and Safety North.

I’m also delighted to confirm that the Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham has agreed to give an address on the emergency response to the Manchester Arena bombing and what Manchester is doing to prevent tall buildings post-Grenfell. Mayor Burnham will be delivering his speech at 9:30am on 10 October in the Fire Safety Keynote Theatre (Sponsored by Advanced) so make sure you don’t miss this session. You can register to attend Fire Safety North for FREE at www.firesafetyevents.com/north

In the news

Sadly, since our last issue London suffered another suspected terrorist attack outside the Houses of Parliament. Fortunately, nobody was killed but two people did suffer minor injuries and this is a stark reminder of the increasing terrorism concerns we face in Britain. As you will see on our new security news pages the Met Police are now trialing Live Facial Recognition technology in a range of environments including public events and crowded public spaces. The technology is being used to assist in the prevention and detection of crime by identifying wanted criminals. The live facial recognition cameras are focused on an area, when people pass through the area their images are streamed directly to the Live Facial Recognition system database. 

Hackitt review 

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and interview Dame Judith Hackitt about the feedback she’s received on her independent review on the Building Regulations and Fire Safety. Dame Judith gave her view on combustible materials, hit back at suggestions she had excluded any industry groups from her review and gave her thoughts on third party accreditation, a fire safety passport scheme and key next steps to implement her findings. You will be able to read this interview in full inside the next edition of FSM, which comes out in December. 

Awards open for entries

After the success of the inaugural Safety and Health Excellence Awards I’m pleased to announce that entries for the 2019 Awards will open on 8 October. We will once again have categories on best innovation for fire, best innovation for security, campaign of the year, unsung hero award, health and safety manager of the year, health and safety team of the year, rising star and more. It’s FREE to enter the awards and will only take you a few moments to do so. This is the perfect way to recognise your team, an individual in your business or your product/campaign that has made a real difference to protecting people or premises.

Last year we had more than 150 entries and culminated with a gala dinner attended by over 420 of your industry peers. This year’s Awards will take place on 10 April at Vox, Resorts World Birmingham and be hosted by popular comedian Sean Lock.

Please do take the time to enter as there are plenty of you who deserve to be recognised for the outstanding job you do at helping to keep us safe. The entry process is open until 31 January 2019 and you can see full criteria and enter online at www.she-awards.co.uk 

I look forward to seeing many of you at Fire Safety North in EventCity, Manchester on 9-10 October and FSM will return in December with not only our in-depth interview with Dame Judith Hackitt but also focuses on tall buildings, access control, intruder alarms and health and safety.