We Have to Do Better on High Rise Apartment Fire Safety

The number of large apartment blocks being built in the UK has risen dramatically in the last decade. Cities like Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow are being transformed as regards their skyline and street level environment. Many high rise blocks are co-living experiments too, packing four people into one unit with shared kitchen and living room areas. One block in Manchester is planned to home 1100 people, but has anyone modelled the evacuation times at say 2am on a Saturday night?

These vast HMOs are a great solution for housing an extra one million migrants per year, but are they also a fire hazard? Tech regarding spotting fires and getting them put out before they spread rapidly, cutting off escape routes, is surely essential for insurers looking to cover these 20-storey building units? Surely politicians, planners and housing trusts all have a duty of care towards their prospective tenants?

Here’s the word from the FBU;

The union representing the overwhelming majority of firefighters has slammed new government guidance on building evacuation, saying that failings have left residents vulnerable to further Grenfell-style tragedies. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommended in October 2019 that the government develop guidelines for the evacuation of high-rise buildings. It finally published these in February 2024, more than four years later.

Now, in a letter to Home Secretary James Cleverly, Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack said it was a “disgrace” that it had taken so long and described the guidance as containing “little of real substance”. The guidance was based on live tests of an evacuation conducted by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and the National Fire Chiefs’ Council (NFCC), but these did not take place on anything like the scale of Grenfell Tower. They also did not use smoke. The letter describes the guidance as a “tick-box exercise” which “adds almost nothing to improve evacuation policy for high rise buildings”.

Commenting on the letter, Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, said:

“This evacuation guidance is too little and too late. Nearly seven years on since the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, very little has changed on the regulations covering this critical area of safety. The Home Office has left residents in high rise flats vulnerable to a repeat of the Grenfell Fire tragedy. Ministers have engaged in what looks like a tick-box exercise to evacuation guidelines for people’s homes.

“The Grenfell Tower fire was a tragedy created by politicians and big business. For decades, the profits of developers were prioritised over human life. Cutting corners on regulation, funding and firefighters’ health and safety will not keep people safe. It may only be a matter of time before we face another tragedy, unless there is a dramatic policy shift. Ministers must wake up, and listen to the voices of firefighters and residents.”