The Fire Protection Association:
Advancing Fire Safety Standards
As part of our We’re All in This Together! campaign in support of Fire Door Safety Week 2025, we’re shining a light on key voices from the fire safety industry to help to raise fire safety awareness, promote higher standards and inspire proactive fire safety practices for all. Today, we have the Fire Protection Association (FPA), which works to identify the dangers of fire, reduce fire-related risks, and influence policy. In this article, we hear from Dr Gavin Dunn, Chief Executive at the FPA, who discusses the implications of the Building Safety Act 2022 and the FPA’s call for fire safety and property protection to be placed at the heart of the government’s built environment strategy.
Setting Fire Safety Standards and Influencing Policy
Established in 1946, the Fire Protection Association (FPA) is dedicated to setting the highest industry standards, reducing fire-related risks, and helping to protect businesses and individuals. With a heritage of sharing fire safety messages and information with government, businesses, their members, and the wider public, the FPA actively seeks to advance fire safety standards by educating the fire sector, lobbying government, and working with them to address issues and concerns.
In force since 2022, the Building Safety Act places duties and responsibilities on every person in the supply chain, from the client to the installer of each component, to ensure that what they are doing is safe and that they are discharging their duties properly.
A year ago, the FPA published a series of policy statements calling for fire life safety and property protection to be placed at the heart of the government’s built environment strategy. How is this progressing?
Over the past year, we’ve seen the release of the final Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report, which lists 58 key recommendations, which the government has welcomed and accepted in principle. It’s certainly encouraging to see action now being taken on some of the major challenges facing our sector. One such development is the new, albeit long-overdue, requirement for sprinklers in all new care homes, which the FPA strongly welcomes. This is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
The guidance and position on schools, however, remains disappointingly unclear. It should be noted that Building Bulletin 100 (BB 100): Design for fire safety in schools does recommend the installation of sprinklers in all new schools, but this is currently being circumvented. Equally overlooked in the current safety rhetoric is a seeming lack of importance around the value of social elements; consider, for instance, the impact that education and school facilities have on local communities. However, the government’s perspective on fire risk assessors marks a significant step in the right direction, and we have seen the necessary announcement of mandatory UKAS accreditation and updated standards through the British Standards Institution (BSI).
The government is committed to overhauling the construction products regulatory regime, and at the centre of this change is the Building Safety Act. What are your thoughts on its implementation so far?
The Building Safety Act has been in force for a few years now, and the industry is gradually becoming accustomed to the new regulatory regime overseen by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). Unfortunately, the building application process under the new BSR has not met expectations, with shortcomings on both sides. One aspect of the issue is that the industry is not providing the relevant information required to the standard expected by the BSR. If this continues to happen, it is only reasonable for any regulator to take a firm stance – that is just the practical reality of the situation.
However, it has also become clear that the new regulator has underestimated the situation, approaching the construction sector from a very theoretical point of view. This viewpoint has struggled to cope with the realities of the industry. In practice, we are seeing the Gateway process taking too long, with developers experiencing ongoing delays. We have also seen the regulator struggling to recruit and retain the right calibre of people, and in the required numbers needed, to make this work. Fundamentally, there is a mixture of problems and progress, with work still needing to be done on both sides of the Gateway process.
In your opinion, what key actions can be taken to improve the quality and safety of buildings?
One of the things holding up the change we were hoping to see is the regulator’s reluctance to take action against those who have acted wrongly. The BSR has also been warning the industry for several years that it will ‘prosecute hard and prosecute early’, but publicly, we have yet to see any real enforcement action penalising those who fail to discharge their duties or similar. What we are hearing is that, while the government has given the regulator those powers, meeting the evidential requirements for criminal prosecution is proving to be difficult. But stronger action is needed.
It cannot be emphasised enough: enforcement plays a key role in improving standards across the built environment sector, and we need the regulator to get the enforcement ball rolling. The BSA is currently at a critical stage, and what happens next will ultimately determine its success.
Even without enforcement, however, there is the potential for significant financial consequences for individuals and organisations that fail to address the requirements of the current system. I do believe we are starting to see further integration of property protection measures to further life safety, often driven by insurer requirements. Indeed, when high levels of life safety are being considered, adding property protection is a highly cost-effective way to achieve this. Enhancing life safety by implementing more property protection ultimately reduces risks for everyone involved in the process.
What does the FPA plan to do to support the implementation of the Building Safety Act and its additional legislation?
From the FPA’s point of view, we believe it is in the public interest and benefits all our stakeholders to do everything possible to support the BSR in its role of overseeing the building safety regime. Not only do we want to see them succeed, we need them to. There are things we can do as an organisation, both directly and indirectly, to help the regulator disseminate the message, gather feedback from our members, and possibly provide services to support projects and individuals.
Indirectly, we can introduce a range of services to the marketplace, helping the industry understand what is changing and how to navigate these changes effectively. This includes our competency agenda, research agenda, knowledge dissemination, and testing capabilities, which aim to help the industry understand what’s expected of them and provide solutions to improve their performance. All of this contributes to supporting the sector and, consequently, to helping the regulator ensure that our built environment is safe.
To discover more about the training, resources and various high-profile events delivered by the Fire Protection Association, visit: https://www.thefpa.co.uk/
