Agenda item

Ross O’Loughlin, Fire Safety Assurance Manager:

a)    presented a report to Performance Scrutiny Committee on the Councils actions and progress on fire safety in light of the Hackitt review following the tragic events at Grenfell Tower.

b)    explained that the collaboration between Investment and Housing Repairs Teams had created opportunity to enhance fire safety provisions across the housing stock particularly regarding fire doors. The invitation of SAT into these collaborative meetings had seen some projects and issues expedited through development of understanding the holistic risk-based approach, combined with project management and joinery expertise. This would continue and despite teething problems in the procurement of fire doors in the tower blocks, fire safety knowledge had gathered momentum and was being realised in the commitment to qualifying staff to BM Trada (UK third party accreditation service for wood work).

c)    highlighted that the Fire Service Inspection of the Tower Blocks was facilitated by SAT. Through negotiation and careful consideration of the risks presented to the Fire Service, the current progress and plans in place had satisfied the inspectors that risk was appropriately managed.

d)    stated that the main effort was aimed at the tower blocks as this had a greater fire risk, in terms of number of occupants in one location. However, the overall assessment was not of a high likelihood. All the actions in the last round of Fire Risk Assessments had been completed. Now the fire strategies had been completed, new Fire Risk Assessments could be commissioned with a better picture being built, with more knowledge to make the right decisions around investment in fire safety.

e)    explained that sheltered schemes were the next priority in terms of building risk, due to the number of occupants and the type of occupant. The fire door programmes would be delivered with a risk-based approach, to manage the investment output. The same approach to fire strategies would continue as with tower blocks.

f)     highlighted that RO/ROSS checks carried out so far had provided strong evidence that the legal checks were being carried out in accordance with the appropriate standards and regularity.

g)    invited members’ comments and questions.

Question: Members asked for an explanation of paragraph 6.3 of the report?

Response: Officers were looking at how the Council could best engage with residents and make sure that their views were heard. This process would start from the beginning with Councillors and move forward from there.

Comment: Members commented that the training session that took place last week was useful and that it would be a good idea to do an additional member workshop later.

Question: Members asked how the fire safety data would be presented in relation to performance.

Response: At the current time this was not known.

Question: Members asked whether fire drills took place at high rise flats.

Response: This had been discussed with the fire service and would not be taking place. Some high-rise flats had been partially evacuated before, but the fire service tried to steer away from doing fire drills. There had been fire drills at Trent View but a ‘stay put policy’ was in place for the building due to it being made from concrete and free from cladding. The fire service had strict control on how to evacuate high rise flats so it would be managed effectively and precisely by the fire service as experts if the time arose.

Comment: Members asked for performance targets to be incorporated into the next report.

RESOLVED that:

1. Performance Targets be incorporated into future updates on fire safety.

2. The progress made in addressing the issues outlined within the report and proposals from the Hackitt review be noted.