Fire and rescue services need to brace themselves. The Compliance Code and Enforcement Concordat of old are disappearing into history, with an all-new Regulators’ Code scheduled to see the light of day next April.
According to the Government, the idea behind the move is to promote a more beneficial relationship between regulators and the companies with which they work on a regular basis.
The Government also wants to see regulators challenged by businesses and Joe Public if it’s believed they’re straying from the necessary standard of operation.
There are six main areas within the proposed Code. Are all bases duly covered?
We’d all like to bear witness to a scenario wherein prosecutions for breaches of fire safety regulations are a thing of the past. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world.
Over GB pound 100,000 (US$131,049) worth of fines have been dished out in the UK across the last month alone, many of them relating to breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
Interestingly, a new GB pound 3 million (US$3.9 million) fund is now in place that will help council managers take the fight to those landlords who preside over premises that are often grossly overcrowded (and wherein there is a high risk of fire).
Fire doors are a massively important element of the built environment. They’re not just doors, either. As engineered safety devices, they could literally mean the difference between life and death.
How many times, though, have you visited premises and witnessed poor quality installations, and fire doors deliberately held open for one spurious reason or another?
A recent fire risk assessor survey showed that 80 percent of emergency escape routes examined were obstructed in some way. An appalling statistic.
Fire Door Safety Week wants to tackle these key-critical issues head on. That’s why IFSECGlobal.com is backing the initiative.
If the general public can be made to understand the importance of fire doors, then maybe — just maybe — some crucial headway might be made.
The last seven years have realized a 50 percent decrease in hoax telephone calls to the London Fire Brigade. That’s good news for the tax payer.
Apparently, it’s all down to the inexorable rise of the mobile phone. The average child receives their first mobile on or around their twelfth birthday, so they’re not looking to pop along to the nearest phone box when feeling mischievous. Today’s tech-savvy kids know mobile calls can be traced. Not only are hoax calls pointless, costly, and time-wasting, but they can also be mightily dangerous. People involved in a real emergency scenario could die if the fire services are misdirected. It doesn’t get much more serious than that.
Nice to see the hoaxers are on their way out. Here, however, is a selection of genuine hoax calls made in August 2013:
The Government’s continued desire to shave costs in the public sector has both real and potential implications for the emergency services.
With ongoing dialogue around the slimming down of police services in the background, the new debate centres on the emergency services working in even closer alliance with each other to shave costs.
Looking at the Government’s view of affairs, some commentators suggest the coalition may see total amalgamation as the way forward. The Fire Brigades’ Union is set firmly against that idea.
Would any such amalgamation lead to a loss in specialist expertise? Is it worth trialling some pilot projects to see if fears over shared premises and Control Rooms might be unfounded?
Crucially, would standards and safety levels witness a reduction in focus?
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Plus, we explore the growing risks of lithium-ion battery fires and hear from experts in disability evacuation and social housing.
That video of hoax calls is amazing. The one with the camera in the phone box (“We can see you on the camera, you’re not an old lady”) is brilliant. Didn’t know they could do that?
This is impressive due to the reduction of hoax calls, however what I am not clear about is the government policy towards fire safety and security across the economy