Fire safety: Risk prioritisation in existing buildings

I hope you will not consider this submission to be tangential to your inquiry into what are, essentially, technical matters. I raise social, ethical and even political questions. But I submit that these issues will inevitably underpin your thinking. It would be wrong to pretend they do not exist or are outside the terms of your inquiry. They are not theoretical abstractions but the bedrock on which you will build your recommendations. Despite the focused task you have been given (largely about building height), and the very short timescale, I hope you have already considered many if not most of them, and plan to judge them systematically.

For example, you ask for advice on the approaches, tools and methodologies which should define your work to achieve appropriate fire safety levels in existing buildings.

Of course that depends entirely on what is considered ‘appropriate’.

Read the full article on page 50 of FIRE magazine March 2020

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