New guidance for fire safety in shopping centres was published earlier this year. As one of the guide’s authors Gordon Garrad says that while the Fire Safety Order has generally worked well in the retail sector, there is always room for improvement.
The starting point for this article is the question – is there a problem with fire safety in shopping centres? There are around 4000 recorded fires in shops every year, some of them in retail centres. But there have been no major fires in recent years because centres are designed to be safe and include a wide range of good, well maintained fire safety systems. Shopping centres are increasingly complicated buildings that often include a number of different uses within the complex – offices, leisure areas, hotels and apartments are not uncommon, as in the example pictured above.
Because of what goes on in them, retail centres require relatively high and more sophisticated standard of management compared to some other building uses. Management, therefore, usually have a good awareness of the requirements of fire safety.
While there are concerns about the understanding of the Fire Safety Order (FSO) in smaller businesses, it is worth noting that a recently published study by the Communities and Local Government department (CLG) on the impact of the Order states that overall, it is effective and is being used properly in large buildings and by larger organisations. It notes that fire services have generally found it of benefit and that it creates a more proactive approach to fire safety management by building owners. These conclusions reflect my own experience of working with many shopping centre operators and managers.
However, there is always room for improvement and the FSO offers a continuing means of improving the fire safety awareness of those responsible for implementing and maintaining fire safety measures. Reflecting this, Jeremy Gardner Associates have worked with the British Council of Shopping Centres to produce Guidance Note 59: Fire Safety Order – What it Means for Shopping Centres, published in April.
The Fire Safety Order
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 came into effect on 1 October 2006. It replaced over 100 pieces of fire safety law – the most notable of which were the Fire Precautions Act 1971 and the Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations – with the intention of simplifying legislation.
The legislation involves a significant change of emphasis. Buildings will no longer be routinely inspected by the fire service to check if they are complying with the standards set down in the fire certificate. As a result, fire certificates are no longer issued or enforced.
The approach taken by the Fire Safety Order is similar to that adopted by current health and safety legislation and is based on risk assessments. Fire certification tended to ‘freeze’ the level of fire protection to the standard prevailing at the time the certificate was issued. In contrast, the new legislation is of a ‘dynamic’ nature, ensuring that fire safety measures are updated in the light of current experience, changes in use, or shortcomings revealed following a risk assessment.
The employer or manager needs to nominate a competent person to carry out the fire safety risk assessment and implement and maintain a fire management plan. In a shopping centre this means that there will be more than one responsible person – the tenant will be responsible for their shop and the landlord responsible for the common parts. Risk assessments are to be carried out at least annually or whenever there has been a change in the circumstances. As there is also an ongoing responsibility to continually monitor fire precautions, risk assessments in retail centres are likely to be undertaken more frequently than annually.
While the responsibility for fire safety now rests with the operator, fire and rescue services have extensive powers under the FSO. They can issue an alterations notice that would make it an offence to carry out any alterations that may affect the fire safety within the premises, without first notifying them. They can issue an enforcement notice to carry out work to improve the fire safety measures if they believe they are inadequate. This may be to insist on the removal of a mall kiosk they feel is located in the wrong area, or to require modifications to the fire alarm system if, for example, the standard of detection was not adequate. The landlord or occupier would then be required to carry out the necessary changes within a reasonable period. Ultimately they can issue a prohibition notice to close a building or part of the building, if they feel that the risk to occupants is imminently life threatening. Such a notice has immediate effect. In theory, this could occur if fundamental systems such as the sprinklers, smoke control or fire alarm were shown not to be working properly. In practice, the fire service would only issue a prohibition notice as a last resort; normally they would try to work with the building management to find a solution both in the interim and long term that can allow it to continue to trade.
Impact on management
The FSO represents a significant change in the emphasis on how fire safety in buildings is managed and maintained, and responsibility for this rests entirely on the operator. However, it provides a more flexible framework for shopping centre owners, managers and tenants to manage fire safety within their premises, as it does not require strict adherence to prescriptive standards set down in a fire certificate.
The new legislation should be less restrictive once the building is occupied because changes within a building may be carried out – without first having to obtain approval from the fire service. However, a risk assessment would have to be carried out to ensure that fire safety is not compromised, and the results of this would need to be recorded and included in the fire safety manual for the centre.
This allows landlords and tenants to make proactive choices based on their own experiences of what works well in their centre and what does not. It should not result in any drastic changes in the day to day running of a shopping centre, or impose more onerous expectations in terms of housekeeping, maintenance and testing. This is our experience from working with many shopping centre managers. It should be noted, however, that Building Regulations approval may still be needed for building work such as structural alterations.
Older centres
One potential source of problems was the impact of the Fire Safety Order on older centres. The design guidance for fire safety systems is continuously changing to reflect improvements in technology but the systems in many older shopping centres may not comply with current guidance and best practice. Would a risk assessment show that existing systems need to be upgraded? It shouldn’t do, unless they are no longer ‘fit for purpose’. Would the risk assessment show that the building is unsafe? In practice this has not proved to be the case.
Retailing is a very dynamic environment, particularly shopping centre design and operation. To meet the challenge of new centres, older malls have had to improve to become more attractive to shoppers and the retail units reconfigured to meet the needs of retailers. One example is that the typical interior design of a 1970s centre resulted in low ceilings and relatively dark malls to emphasise the attractiveness of the shops themselves. This approach has changed completely so that modern malls are now wider and taller and have lighter spaces that are attractive in their own right.
These frequent changes have meant that most older centres have had many opportunities to upgrade and improve fire safety. This has allowed them to be brought up to current fire safety standards.
As a consequence, I am not aware of any flurry of prohibition or enforcement notices by the fire service requiring major changes to fire safety systems. Where fire services have concerns, they are usually flexible and allow changes to be incorporated as tenants change or refit, or they allow temporary measures while problems are put right. This contrasts with the approach to other buildings with higher risk to occupants, particularly sleeping risks such as older hotels and boarding houses.
Another factor that has minimised the impact of the FSO is that shopping centre managers often have good relationships with fire services. This allows the centre management to ask them for advice, and the fire service to trust the centre management to maintain a good standard of fire safety.
Perhaps surprisingly, fire services seem to appreciate the benefits of the FSO even if they didn’t think it was really needed. The removal of the need to prepare and maintain fire certificates means that they can concentrate on buildings that they consider to be a real risk and consequently, there have been relatively few alterations notices served on shopping centres.
Making sense of the Fire Safety Order
In the early days of the FSO there were some problems. This was because shopping centre owners and operators did not know how to carry out a fire risk assessment and some were not done well. This was partly a misunderstanding of what was required, and partly because they did not always tailor the risk assessment to the complexities of a large shopping centre. However, centre managers have learned quickly and they are now much more aware of the requirements and benefits of fire risk assessments. Many have developed training systems to allow their staff to carry them out, although they may still need specialist advice.
One area that still causes confusion is the overlapping responsibility between landlord and tenant. The landlord has a degree of responsibility for a tenant’s space as it interacts with the landlord’s space and therefore the fire safety of the landlord’s areas. This is particularly the case where smaller retailers are involved, as they may not be fully aware of their responsibilities under the FSO. For example, they may not understand restrictions on fit out imposed by the fire strategy, the need to maintain fire doors to service/escape corridors, or appreciate the need to maintain escape routes through store rooms and to maintain service/escape corridors clear of goods. Tenants have a responsibility for their actions if they affect the landlord’s areas.
When it comes to maintaining hardware, testing and faults on fire alarms, emergency lighting, sprinklers and smoke control systems are generally well recorded. But one area often overlooked is the testing and maintenance of fire doors and door furniture. All employees should be encouraged to report defective equipment and the defects should be properly logged, along with a date when the problem was resolved.
Mall activity
One thing that does often cause the fire service concerns is the use of a mall for trading, events and commercialisation. The mall is the primary escape route for a shopping centre, and it is important that it is maintained as an escape route, but that need not preclude any activity. However, use of the mall is a complex issue and occasionally management do not fully understand this and in such cases, fire services have been known to issue enforcement notices.
This can be avoided by risk assessing each use of the mall, and an approach that supports the risk assessment by carrying out fire engineering analysis is recommended. This results in a technical report containing the details of the analysis that can be shown to the fire service as part of the risk assessment, and in simpler guidance backed up by training for centre management.
In summary
Shopping centres are amongst the safest and generally best managed and maintained buildings. So while the FSO has taken some time to be fully understood and implemented, I am not aware of any major problems for centre managers caused by the legislation. The FSO means that management are now much more aware of fire safety and more proactive in ensuring the safety of the occupants of their buildings.
Gordon Garrad is a director of Jeremy Gardner Associates, who worked with the British Council of Shopping Centres to produce Guidance Note 59 Fire Safety Order – What it means for Shopping Centres. www.jgafire.com
New guidance for fire safety in shopping centres was published earlier this year. As one of the guide’s authors Gordon Garrad says that while the Fire Safety Order has generally worked well in the retail sector, there is always room for improvement.
The starting point for this article is the question – is there a problem with fire safety in shopping centres? There are around 4000 recorded fires in shops every year, some of them in retail centres. But there have been no major fires in recent years because centres are designed to be safe and include a wide range of good, well maintained fire safety systems. Shopping centres are increasingly complicated buildings that often include a number of different uses within the complex – offices, leisure areas, hotels and apartments are not uncommon, as in the example pictured above.
Because of what goes on in them, retail centres require relatively high and more sophisticated standard of management compared to some other building uses. Management, therefore, usually have a good awareness of the requirements of fire safety.
While there are concerns about the understanding of the Fire Safety Order (FSO) in smaller businesses, it is worth noting that a recently published study by the Communities and Local Government department (CLG) on the impact of the Order states that overall, it is effective and is being used properly in large buildings and by larger organisations. It notes that fire services have generally found it of benefit and that it creates a more proactive approach to fire safety management by building owners. These conclusions reflect my own experience of working with many shopping centre operators and managers.
However, there is always room for improvement and the FSO offers a continuing means of improving the fire safety awareness of those responsible for implementing and maintaining fire safety measures. Reflecting this, Jeremy Gardner Associates have worked with the British Council of Shopping Centres to produce Guidance Note 59: Fire Safety Order – What it Means for Shopping Centres, published in April.
The Fire Safety Order
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 came into effect on 1 October 2006. It replaced over 100 pieces of fire safety law – the most notable of which were the Fire Precautions Act 1971 and the Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations – with the intention of simplifying legislation.
The legislation involves a significant change of emphasis. Buildings will no longer be routinely inspected by the fire service to check if they are complying with the standards set down in the fire certificate. As a result, fire certificates are no longer issued or enforced.
The approach taken by the Fire Safety Order is similar to that adopted by current health and safety legislation and is based on risk assessments. Fire certification tended to ‘freeze’ the level of fire protection to the standard prevailing at the time the certificate was issued. In contrast, the new legislation is of a ‘dynamic’ nature, ensuring that fire safety measures are updated in the light of current experience, changes in use, or shortcomings revealed following a risk assessment.
The employer or manager needs to nominate a competent person to carry out the fire safety risk assessment and implement and maintain a fire management plan. In a shopping centre this means that there will be more than one responsible person – the tenant will be responsible for their shop and the landlord responsible for the common parts. Risk assessments are to be carried out at least annually or whenever there has been a change in the circumstances. As there is also an ongoing responsibility to continually monitor fire precautions, risk assessments in retail centres are likely to be undertaken more frequently than annually.
While the responsibility for fire safety now rests with the operator, fire and rescue services have extensive powers under the FSO. They can issue an alterations notice that would make it an offence to carry out any alterations that may affect the fire safety within the premises, without first notifying them. They can issue an enforcement notice to carry out work to improve the fire safety measures if they believe they are inadequate. This may be to insist on the removal of a mall kiosk they feel is located in the wrong area, or to require modifications to the fire alarm system if, for example, the standard of detection was not adequate. The landlord or occupier would then be required to carry out the necessary changes within a reasonable period. Ultimately they can issue a prohibition notice to close a building or part of the building, if they feel that the risk to occupants is imminently life threatening. Such a notice has immediate effect. In theory, this could occur if fundamental systems such as the sprinklers, smoke control or fire alarm were shown not to be working properly. In practice, the fire service would only issue a prohibition notice as a last resort; normally they would try to work with the building management to find a solution both in the interim and long term that can allow it to continue to trade.
Impact on management
The FSO represents a significant change in the emphasis on how fire safety in buildings is managed and maintained, and responsibility for this rests entirely on the operator. However, it provides a more flexible framework for shopping centre owners, managers and tenants to manage fire safety within their premises, as it does not require strict adherence to prescriptive standards set down in a fire certificate.
The new legislation should be less restrictive once the building is occupied because changes within a building may be carried out – without first having to obtain approval from the fire service. However, a risk assessment would have to be carried out to ensure that fire safety is not compromised, and the results of this would need to be recorded and included in the fire safety manual for the centre.
This allows landlords and tenants to make proactive choices based on their own experiences of what works well in their centre and what does not. It should not result in any drastic changes in the day to day running of a shopping centre, or impose more onerous expectations in terms of housekeeping, maintenance and testing. This is our experience from working with many shopping centre managers. It should be noted, however, that Building Regulations approval may still be needed for building work such as structural alterations.
Older centres
One potential source of problems was the impact of the Fire Safety Order on older centres. The design guidance for fire safety systems is continuously changing to reflect improvements in technology but the systems in many older shopping centres may not comply with current guidance and best practice. Would a risk assessment show that existing systems need to be upgraded? It shouldn’t do, unless they are no longer ‘fit for purpose’. Would the risk assessment show that the building is unsafe? In practice this has not proved to be the case.
Retailing is a very dynamic environment, particularly shopping centre design and operation. To meet the challenge of new centres, older malls have had to improve to become more attractive to shoppers and the retail units reconfigured to meet the needs of retailers. One example is that the typical interior design of a 1970s centre resulted in low ceilings and relatively dark malls to emphasise the attractiveness of the shops themselves. This approach has changed completely so that modern malls are now wider and taller and have lighter spaces that are attractive in their own right.
These frequent changes have meant that most older centres have had many opportunities to upgrade and improve fire safety. This has allowed them to be brought up to current fire safety standards.
As a consequence, I am not aware of any flurry of prohibition or enforcement notices by the fire service requiring major changes to fire safety systems. Where fire services have concerns, they are usually flexible and allow changes to be incorporated as tenants change or refit, or they allow temporary measures while problems are put right. This contrasts with the approach to other buildings with higher risk to occupants, particularly sleeping risks such as older hotels and boarding houses.
Another factor that has minimised the impact of the FSO is that shopping centre managers often have good relationships with fire services. This allows the centre management to ask them for advice, and the fire service to trust the centre management to maintain a good standard of fire safety.
Perhaps surprisingly, fire services seem to appreciate the benefits of the FSO even if they didn’t think it was really needed. The removal of the need to prepare and maintain fire certificates means that they can concentrate on buildings that they consider to be a real risk and consequently, there have been relatively few alterations notices served on shopping centres.
Making sense of the Fire Safety Order
In the early days of the FSO there were some problems. This was because shopping centre owners and operators did not know how to carry out a fire risk assessment and some were not done well. This was partly a misunderstanding of what was required, and partly because they did not always tailor the risk assessment to the complexities of a large shopping centre. However, centre managers have learned quickly and they are now much more aware of the requirements and benefits of fire risk assessments. Many have developed training systems to allow their staff to carry them out, although they may still need specialist advice.
One area that still causes confusion is the overlapping responsibility between landlord and tenant. The landlord has a degree of responsibility for a tenant’s space as it interacts with the landlord’s space and therefore the fire safety of the landlord’s areas. This is particularly the case where smaller retailers are involved, as they may not be fully aware of their responsibilities under the FSO. For example, they may not understand restrictions on fit out imposed by the fire strategy, the need to maintain fire doors to service/escape corridors, or appreciate the need to maintain escape routes through store rooms and to maintain service/escape corridors clear of goods. Tenants have a responsibility for their actions if they affect the landlord’s areas.
When it comes to maintaining hardware, testing and faults on fire alarms, emergency lighting, sprinklers and smoke control systems are generally well recorded. But one area often overlooked is the testing and maintenance of fire doors and door furniture. All employees should be encouraged to report defective equipment and the defects should be properly logged, along with a date when the problem was resolved.
Mall activity
One thing that does often cause the fire service concerns is the use of a mall for trading, events and commercialisation. The mall is the primary escape route for a shopping centre, and it is important that it is maintained as an escape route, but that need not preclude any activity. However, use of the mall is a complex issue and occasionally management do not fully understand this and in such cases, fire services have been known to issue enforcement notices.
This can be avoided by risk assessing each use of the mall, and an approach that supports the risk assessment by carrying out fire engineering analysis is recommended. This results in a technical report containing the details of the analysis that can be shown to the fire service as part of the risk assessment, and in simpler guidance backed up by training for centre management.
In summary
Shopping centres are amongst the safest and generally best managed and maintained buildings. So while the FSO has taken some time to be fully understood and implemented, I am not aware of any major problems for centre managers caused by the legislation. The FSO means that management are now much more aware of fire safety and more proactive in ensuring the safety of the occupants of their buildings.
Gordon Garrad is a director of Jeremy Gardner Associates, who worked with the British Council of Shopping Centres to produce Guidance Note 59 Fire Safety Order – What it means for Shopping Centres. www.jgafire.com
