Grenfell Inquiry 'wants': when the list is just too long

Government & Politics

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Grenfell Inquiry ‘wants’:

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Continuing our series of articles focused on the Grenfell Inquiry, FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin looks at the recent report published by the Fire Brigades Union, The Grenfell Tower Fire: background to an atrocity

When the list is just too long

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att Wrack hinted during his interview for FIRE last month that the FBU might put forward some early recommendations before the Grenfell Inquiry heard all the firefighter evidence. It was no surprise that a report appeared on September 5 at a rather low-key launch in a committee room in the Palace of Westminster.

The report contains a detailed summary of legislative and regulatory change relating to fire safety during the past 70 years. It is well referenced and seeing past the polemic, it is a decent read.

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FBU ‘Wants’ The conclusions section at the rear of the document sets out a shopping list of what the FBU ‘wants’: 1. Comprehensive and exhaustive investigation of the Grenfell Tower fire 2. New legislation and improved regulation 3. National assessment of risk and resilience 4. National standards of fire cover 5. A national stakeholder oversight body 6. Substantial investment in the Fire and Rescue Service 7. Publicly funded, owned and accountable research establishment and testing house 8. Change to building control to be purely local authority staff 9. National certification scheme for fire risk assessors 10. Consultation and negotiation at all levels 11. Firefighters safety and health protected.

The report provides no sense of priority and how much these ‘wants’ could cost. Some are unquestionable – who would not want to see firefighter safety and health protected? But it is unrealistic to expect that this government, mired in Brexit chaos, will find time in the Parliamentary calendar to change the Fire and Rescue Services Act, Building Regulations and the Fire Safety Order.

There is a bit of movement around Building Regulations and Approved Document B on fire safety, and if it is true, there are now around 200 civil servants working on the Grenfell response, which includes this area. Getting involved in this process would be incredibly helpful to getting change where it is needed and seconding FBU officials into MHCLG and Home Office, may be one way to be part of the solution.

The demise of national standards of fire cover and the abolition of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council (CFBAC) are both strongly attached to the direction of travel firmly set out in the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. The Act pointed to a significant step change from national oversight to local leadership – the so-called fire sector was to be in charge. Fourteen years on and in a post Grenfell world, the pendulum is returning to national approaches, but not necessarily with government at the centre.

Points three and four go hand in hand. A national assessment of risk and resilience underpinned by national guidance and oversight of IRMP development would

“The pendulum is returning to national approaches, but not necessarily with government at the centre” www.fire–magazine.com | October 2018 | 11

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New National Body Asking for a new body to oversee national standards, codes of practice, guidance and standard operating procedures is right. The government has already stolen a march on the standards item on this list and is setting up a Fire Standards Board for England. It is good to see 49 applications for the Chair and Vice Chair positions – whether that would have been the case had fire not been quite so much in the headlines is hard to know.

While mentioning the defunct CFBAC may result in an eye roll from some, the principle of bringing together all the key organisations with an interest in the future of the Fire and Rescue Service should now be seriously considered.

With the Fire Standards Board, the Home Office is demonstrating that it does see a role for government at the heart of change, so perhaps it will do more in pulling organisations together to respond to the Grenfell Inquiry.

The FBU report says that ‘these matters cannot be left solely to chief officers and the NFCC’. Agreed, but they will have to work alongside them and others to get this done.

Perhaps the FBU could kick this off, make this happen and test the appetite for making the change that will be so incredibly important for the future of the Fire and Rescue Service.

That new body would be an ideal place to have the discussion and put in place solutions around the certification of fire risk assessors. This is in line with the recommendation in Dame Judith Hackitt’s report about improving levels of competence and the creation of, ‘an overarching body to provide oversight of competence requirements’. There are groups working on the recommendations from the Hackitt Report – there are few quick fixes, so this will last for a long time – it would make sense for them to have some relationship with any new body created in the future.

One government body that has long since become independent is the Building Research Establishment. The

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logically lead to national standards – and in this case that is standards relating to response times. However, there may be a halfway house and that could come from work already taking place.

The National Fire Chiefs Council created a Central Programme Office to manage programmes of work that emanate from its strategy. One of these programmes is focused on community risk. The first project under the programme led by West Midlands Fire Service CFO Phil Loach is looking at how fire and rescue services create their IRMPs to see how national approaches can bring about improvement.

It is timely for the FBU, if they are not doing so already, to be part of this project and wider programme of work – as they were with the National Operational Guidance Programme. Influencing change from the inside may be slow but can be more productive.

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BRE, as it is more commonly known, has found itself at the centre of the post Grenfell response as it has sought to help the world make sense of cladding and its combustibility.

The FBU report calls for a publicly funded, publicly owned and publicly accountable research establishment and testing house. It sounds remarkably like the BRE or its predecessor, the Fire Research Station.

Hole in Fire Research The dearth of fire research commissioned by the government has featured in previous editions of FIRE, notably in March 2016 and the FBU report echoes this view. ‘This is the context within which central government has failed to improve fire safety, where inquiries, inquests and investigations have been ignored, where government funded fire research has virtually ceased and as a result, lessons learned decades ago have been forgotten and tragedies have occurred with devastating effect’.

This point about learning is not new, but it is time to do something about it. The FBU is right in its summary here;

“The principle of bringing together all the key organisations with an interest in the future of the Fire and Rescue Service should now be seriously considered” 12 | October 2018 | www.fire–magazine.com

Photos by Catherine Levin

Government & Politics

“It is a timely contribution to the discussion about how to emerge from the Grenfell Tower fire with meaningful change”

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Procedural Hearing ‘The FBU has formulated recommendations affecting the Fire and Rescue Service, which it considers could and should be made urgently [for London in the first instance]’.

In summary, the recommendations focus on: • Increasing pre-determined attendance for high rise residential buildings • Equipping every pump ladder with an airwave radio • Joint training on ‘changing advice from stay-put’ to a range of personnel • Increasing ridership on command units • Review of vision and its gazeteer • Equip all appliances with six escape hoods and train staff accordingly.

The FBU is looking to government, not the London Fire Commissioner, to fund these changes. ‘Central government should provide the initial funding required to implement these urgent recommendations so that existing FRS budgets are not depleted thereby and proper allowances can be made in the future cycle of strategic planning and funding’.

These recommendations do not take into account the wider cycle of risk management planning where the London Safety Plan is not due for review any time soon.

Sir Martin Moore Bick published his response to the September 3 Procedural Hearing and confirmed that he would not be putting in place any immediate interim recommendations. He notes: ‘It is necessary to bear in mind that the evidence, even at Phase 1, is still far from complete and I am cautious about making recommendations of any kind without being confident that they are grounded in reliable evidence, have been duly considered by other core participants and have the support of the Inquiry’s experts’.

He does not dismiss the idea of interim recommendations, rather provides a new schedule for them to be submitted and invites all core participants to do so by December 14. There will be a further hearing on the proposed interim recommendations at the end of January 2019.

The Grenfell Tower Fire: background to an atrocity sets out a list of ‘wants’ which when added together are costly and unrealistic, but a useful reminder of the lobbying position of the union. It is a timely contribution to the discussion about how to emerge from the Grenfell Tower fire with meaningful change. Change requires a joined up pragmatic approach not just by the FBU, but also by all parts of the fire sector balancing the vital need for learning from incidents with the practical reality of finite funding.

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the lack of a home for learning is what inhibits it from being owned and change being implemented.

One solution coming out of the National Fire Chiefs Council is National Operational Learning. The National Operational Guidance Programme completed its work back in March, but the learning project continued and in October it too will finish. The product is a National Operational Learning system living on ukfrs.com. This is where single points of contact in fire and rescue services across the UK will be able to share local learning at a national level. Some of that learning is likely to come from Coroners’ correspondence or inquiries, including in time, Grenfell.

It is too early to tell if the NFCC approach will be effective as the benefits are likely to only be realised in the long term. Ally this with a cross sector body as described by the FBU report, this could be a more powerful and influential force for change than has been seen before.

Number one on the FBU’s list is a comprehensive and exhaustive inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire. Matt Wrack set out his thoughts about the inquiry in his interview in last months’ FIRE. Since then, legal representatives of the core participants have put forward their submissions for the Procedural Hearing that took place on September 3. Legal counsel for the FBU submitted The Skeleton for 3rd Procedural Hearing (available on the Grenfell Inquiry website).

www.fire–magazine.com | October 2018 | 13