Fire safety continues to a major topic of debate, particularly in hospitals that have had refurbishment carried out. The general manager at Horbury Property Services looks at fire risk assessments, and why it is essential that fire compartmentation is properly inspected during them.
Fire safety continues to be a major ongoing topic for discussion, particularly in hospitals that have had refurbishment work carried out, with managers starting to question now whether the buildings are as safe as they should be. So says Richard Sutton, general manager at Horbury Property Services, who here looks at fire risk assessments, and why it is so important that fire compartmentation is properly inspected.
Back in June last year, in the aftermath of that month’s Grenfell Tower fire in London, the Government ordered more than 17,000 care homes, private hospitals, and hospices to carry out checks on the fire safety of their buildings. According to a news story in Health Service Journal, ‘a number of hospital Trusts were found to have serious breaches, whilst some had failings in basic fire standards, and others were warned that a failure to properly compartmentalise areas was putting patients at intolerable risk if fire broke out’.
HM Government fire risk assessment guidance on the issue of fire safety risk in healthcare for safety professionals was last updated in 2006. This states that: ‘Where the building has been recently constructed or significantly altered, the fire detection and warning arrangements, escape routes, and facilities for the fire and rescue service, should have been designed, constructed, and installed, in line with current building regulations, by following Health Technical Memorandum 05-02: Firecode (Fire safety in the design of healthcare premises). In such cases, it is likely that these measures will be satisfactory as long as they are being properly maintained and no significant increase in risk has been introduced.’ The aforementioned guidance should indeed be read in conjunction with all the relevant HTMs, including HTM 05-03: Operational provisions Part K: Guidance on fire risk assessments in complex healthcare premises,1 HTM 05-01: Managing healthcare fire safety, Second edition, April 2013,2 and HTM 05-02: Firecode – Guidance in support of functional provisions (Fire safety in the design of healthcare premises), 2015 edition.3
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