Order signals need for new approach

Held at London’s Regent’s Park College in late January, the “Fire Safety in Healthcare Premises” seminar’s goal was to provide both theoretical and practical guidance on current fire safety legislation and issues as they affect the NHS, emphasising, in particular, the legal responsibilities and duties imposed by the RRO (as it has become known) on health estates personnel, Trust Boards and those others whose role places a duty on them both to minimise fire risk, and to safely manage evacuations should a fire actually occur. The event also saw detailed information on the causes of, and circumstances surrounding, the fire and accompanying blast at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital on 29 September last year unveiled for the first time in public. Interestingly, it emerged in the presentation on the incident by the hospital’s estates and facilities director, Mike Ralph, the fire appears to have started when a television, which a cleaner had been unable to switch off due to its position high on a wall, overheated, sending burning debris onto material below. The accompanying blast, which in fact did more damage than the fire itself, occurred when a nearby oxygen cylinder ruptured, causing severe damage to a four-bedded bay being used as a day room.

Well-rehearsed routines
The seminar included both a fascinating insight into the events leading up to, during, and after the fire, and a report on the timeline of the successful evacuation procedure which, thanks to wellrehearsed routines, saw all patients safely evacuated in around five minutes. Other presentations offered useful practical guidance on subjects ranging from using flame-retardant paints on walls to inhibit fire spread, to properly maintaining fire alarm and detection equipment. Putting the wide range of fire safety guidance and advice firmly in context early in the day, Emeritus Professor of Fire Safety Law at the University of Central Lancashire Professor Rosemary Everton, a former barrister and acknowledged fire safety expert, began by outlining the key legal requirements imposed by the RRO on the various levels of NHS personnel that can be affected, ranging from health estates managers and fire officers to Trust CEOs. She explained that the Fire Safety Order 2005 (or RRO) had primarily been drawn up to consolidate earlier, “fragmented” fire safety legislation, such as the Fire Precautions (Workplace Regulations) 1997, into one all-encompassing statute. “An interesting mix of good and bad” (the former because it allowed “proportionality” in the way fire enforcement bodies deal with noncompliance, and the latter due to its sheer complexity), Professor Everton said the Order was most notable for the way it shifts primary responsibility for fire safety from fire authorities to individuals. Framed by “an overarching duty to take fire precautions”, the Order has, at its heart, the requirement to undertake fire assessments to identity the fire precautions necessary to ensure compliance with the law.

Need for ‘competent persons’
Among the requirements “fanning out” from this “pivotal requirement” were, Prof. Everton explained, the need to “control risks from dangerous substances”, to “ensure provision of firefighting and fire detection equipment”, to “take firefighting measures”, to “arrange contacts with the emergency services”, to “ensure the existence of effective emergency routes and exits”, to “establish procedures for serious and imminent dangers”, “to properly maintain preventative and protective measures and equipment” (e.g. fire alarms and sprinkler systems), to appoint “competent persons” to assist in this, and to provide sound information and training. While seasoned health and estates managers might not be surprised at the breadth of responsibilities, the professor’s key message, as she moved on to discuss enforcement, was that, in a departure from previous law, the RRO requires the appointment both of “responsible persons” and “competent persons” to hold fire safety responsibility in hospitals and other healthcare premises. Furthermore, the legal “net”, in terms of the range of “responsible persons” that can now face action should a building or estate not comply, or a fire occur, was now “extremely wide”. Prof. Everton elaborated: “At the centre of the Order’s regime is the targeting and burdening of those which it regards as ‘responsible persons’. From Article 3 we learn that this means, in relation to a workplace, the employer, if a workplace is ‘to any extent under his control’ and, in relation to a ‘non-workplace’, or a workplace ‘not to any extent under the employer’s control’, either the person who ‘has control’ of the premises or, in certain circumstances, the owner.”