The Chief Fire Officers Association has issue an acerbic critique of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s opposition of new laws to ensure sprinklers are installed in all new properties in Wales, saying the government is more interested in house builders’ profits than saving lives.
DCLG commissioned a report from BRE Global, which concluded that the sprinkler policy would cost GB pound 6.7 million per life saved over the next decade. The BBC reports that ministers say sprinklers will save 36 lives and prevent around 800 injuries between 2013 and 2022. BRE Global concluded that this was not cost-effective.
The Welsh Assembly passed a law last year to introduce an amendment to Part B of building regulations that would require sprinklers to be fitted in all new and converted residential buildings in Wales. Environment minister John Griffiths told the BBC that the proposals were important in taking forward fire safety. He continued:
Wales will be at the forefront of reducing fire risk and cutting the number of avoidable deaths and injuries caused by fires in residential premises.
Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government secretary who represents DCLG, also attacked the policy, saying that it placed an unnecessary burden of red tape on house-building in Wales. He wrote in a letter to Ann Jones, the Welsh Assembly member who introduced the Domestic Fire Safety measure that led to the new Welsh regulations being introduced, that “the growing distance in relative building costs between England and Wales will place Welsh at a competitive disadvantage, diverting housing investment away from Wales.”
This prompted an angry reaction from CFOA and representatives of the National Fire Sprinkler Network.
CFOA president Vij Randeniya said they were “extremely disappointed” with the negative response of DCLG to the Welsh policy, saying that sprinklers save lives and when taken as a long term cost represent 1 to 2 percent of the total cost of construction.
He said:
We would urge the UK government to reconsider its negative stance to the Welsh approach and its short sighted attitude to the installation of sprinklers. Fire and rescue services see first hand the devastating consequences fire can have and we are repeatedly warning DCLG they are not doing enough to prevent people dying or being injured in their own homes. It appears they want to support the profits of house builders more than they want to protect people’s lives.
Enough is enough
Meanwhile, vice president of the National Fire Sprinkler Network, and former Mid & West Wales chief fire officer, Ronnie King, has urged the government to rethink its stance on sprinklers in residential properties. He said, “let’s stop killing people when we have a solution.”
He made a deeply personal plea in his letter to Eric Pickles, writing:
During my career myself and my fellow firefighters have brought out lifeless bodies of children (sometimes as many as five or six), who needn’t have died in this horrific way, had sprinklers been installed.
Enough is enough, and my colleagues in the service, are ‘fed up’ of it, so we implore you to listen to what the professionals in the service are telling you. In seven recent fires in Great Britain, 36 lives were lost, 31 of them were children. Mention has been made that the Coalition Government is not likely to legislate for sprinklers in the next twenty five years, during which time 8,000 more lives will be lost in fires and hundreds of thousands of people burned or injured in Britain.
Ann Jones had a simple reply to Pickles’s stance on the new regulations: “Don’t play politics with people’s lives.”
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Having attended the Consultation in Cardiff the outcome of this Emotive bill should be very Interesting. Especially if the “Sprinkler Lobby” let this what could be a very lucrative bill fail.
It’s certainly emotive, Ashfire. Have you got a side of the fence, or are you broadly in the middle?
Not cost effective? I certainly know which side of the fence I sit on. Sounds cheap for a life to me.
There’s a side effect to this being discussed at such a high level and that is to level claims at a builder next time there is a fatality which could have been avioded. If it links back to this movement having been denied, and the builder ends up looking guilty, there’s a lot more than 6 million in damage to their reputation loomiing…
I’m not sure that could be laid at the door of the builders groups, as it would ultimately be the Government’s decision, but take your point.
RobThere are alternatives coming to market but at this time i think a focus should be maintained on the shortfalls in life protection-sprinkler issue .I may influence but not direct the decision making process Paul
RobThere are alternatives coming to market but at this time i think a focus should be maintained on the shortfalls in life protection-sprinkler issue .I may influence but not direct the decision making process Paul
As Jonathan O’Neill from the FPA has rather effectively pointed out, this policy makes no sense. Sprinklers are great and the new solutions on the market are great, and yes, they save lives. But if you are going to deploy a thousand fire suppression systems, where should you put them? – In student houses and other HMOs where fire is known to be a problem? – In social housing where fire is a problem because poorer people are often spread too thinly between jobs, looking after kids, and trying to live on a budget? – In the homes of the… Read more »
That’s interesting, why would new technology be precluded? On the other point, agreed that social housing and care homes etc. should be the priority as that’s where the most people still sadly die, but the argument for the policy is that ‘this is a start, and over time everywhere will eventually have them.’ Perhaps though the start should be made with the more vulnerable.
The panel developing the implementation guidance for the measure includes Ian Gough from BAFSA. BAFSA is effectively a lobby group for traditional sprinklers (and they staunchly and actively oppose alternatives). Because most fire suppression installations out there are sprinklers, BAFSA’s interests are to date strongly aligned with the likes of Ronnie King and the NFSN. Unfortunately this creates a weird alliance where Ronnie King speaks emotively of sobbing firefighters and the smell of children’s singed flesh, and no doubt does so from the heart, whilst the sprinkler industry smiles and nods sagely. But the fact is that fire safety is… Read more »
Ahhh I see aaa064 – a good idea at heart but focusing on the wrong buildings. Just because it would be easier to install in new builds than to retroactively install in all the places you mentioned?
As you say Saulsherry, it’s easier to push the costs onto new build where they are effectively hidden. There’s a separate set of regulations that could have been used to drive this retrospectively in rented properties but perhaps there was a fear that landlords would sell up rather than install sprinklers, causing a dip in house prices and a shortage of rented property. To avoid this they would have had to introduce grants to help with the cost, meaning an increase in taxes. Instead they hid the cost by pushing it onto house builders and buyers.
Cost is a factor, but how do you valuate the worth of a human life? You can’t exactly do so in terms of pounds or dollars. There are smart options, there are excessive ones. I say go for what is sufficient but do not scrimp too much that it is less than satisfactory.
Welsh Assembly will favour doing what Westminster doesn’t want, just to flex their muscles me thinks♥, & to placate certain AM’s who used to work for South Wales FRS. Fire Chief’s/CFOA’s close allegiance with the Sprinkler Lobby Groups makes me uncomfortable; their engagement/employment of retired senior Fire Officers, doubly so.(Lobbying of legislators is very hot issue currently). Sprinkler laws have not been widely enacted in land of the litigator still where the first City Ordinance requiring them was 1st passed. Here Housebuilders are rightly alarmed at extra cost burden this represents for them in what are very tough economic times,… Read more »
It’s an oft quoted mantra ‘that you can’t place a value on a human life’ and one which is patently incorrect. We have a limited ability to fund the decisions we make in all aspect of our lives, as individuals and as a society. We place a value on human life in effect by the decisions we make and where we impose and accept measures to impact on the level of safety. As far as I can tell the CLGs position on sprinklers is entirely tenable on the basis that fire does not kill that many people say compared… Read more »
Perhaps instead of completely new and fresh start, we could do with a retroactive start for now. Isn’t the goal saving lives in the first place? You can start by addressing the places where people are most vulnerable.
The financial aspect is always a huge one. It’s unfortunate that such aspect had such a huge weight that it didn’t push for the policy to be a retroactive one.
It is cheaper to pay compensation than it is to have sprinklers fitted to new homes.