Look back into the recent past, and there were debates about whether there should be registration schemes for fire risk assessors.
It seemed that the business of conducting fire risk assessments (FRAs) was about to move out of the amateur world and into a more professional future. Maybe, some of us dared to hope, the dumbing down of fire risk assessments would end.
(I make this comment in the context of official guidance on the subject, which encourages businesses to have a go themselves, regardless of size and complexity. And does anyone else remember John Prescott soothing business owners with a promise that an FRA could only cost GB pound 50?)
Political turnaround
The idea of the registration scheme came about in the early days after Lakanal House as one of the proposals to avoid a similar tragedy in future.
Of course, all this happened under a previous administration. The current one has been cutting back on regulation; the world of health and safety is already very different thanks to a radical overhaul, and there’s more to come.
So, in this context, recent quotes from Health and Safety portfolio Minister Mark Hoban are somewhat worrying.
“Overbearing burden”
Fire Magazine reports that when speaking at the British Safety Council Annual Conference on 5 June 2013, Mr Hoban responded to questions about the impact of fire risk assessments on businesses by saying that “there is a need to look at the burden of current [fire safety] requirements”.
He apparently used the term “overbearing” in describing the current system of fire risk assessment. His words, (though reported in a muddled sentence whose meaning is somewhat ambiguous), seem to imply that some types of lower-risk premises might be made exempt from the need to carry out a fire risk assessment altogether. Or that certain fire risk assessment “criteria” might be cut to reduce red-tape (sorry — we’re not entirely sure what he means by FRA criteria here either!).
What is coming over loud and clear however is that the fire industry should be braced for a change. There’s no reason to think that fire legislation and guidance will be left unscathed by the bonfire of legislation and regulation.
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