IS THIS WHAT REGULATORY SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE? Tom Roche, Secretary of the Business Sprinkler Alliance

Oddly, the image I’m looking at this week isn’t the burnt out hulk of an industrial or commercial building such as the Cannock warehouse fire from May 2024. It’s a photo from Stockholm showing a low-rise residential building left largely uninhabitable after a fire that grew across the building.  It caught my attention not because it’s unique, but because its familiar, too familiar. 

According to reports, 53 residents were evacuated after the fire took hold and spread rapidly through the residential building in Bro, north west of Stockholm. Thankfully no-one was injured yet the fire was a predictable scenario with the building largely unusable for the foreseeable future. Despite the outcome, the building is claimed to comply with the country’s national Building Regulations. Once again, we are left with an uncomfortable outcome: predictable fire behaviour, total building loss and significant disruption to multiple people’s lives.

Earlier in the year, I watched a presentation on work from Netherlands Institute of Public Safety (NIPV) that was based on a series of fires that had spread more extensively than anticipated. Fires had penetrated the building fabric, rendering the structures unusable. These spreading fires damaged more and displaced multiple people from their homes. Again, these incidents were claimed to have regulatory compliance. The images from Stockholm would not have been out of place in the presentation.

Sadly, these fires align with recent fires seen in the UK. On June 1st, a fire spread into the timber frame of low rise residential block in Andover, Hampshire, destroying 19 flats. In a similar fire four years earlier, 19 families were displaced when a fire destroyed a block of flats in Arborfield, Berkshire.

Both fire scenarios were readily foreseeable, but the outcome led to complete loss of the accommodation. This is not about construction techniques, it is about outcomes. Once again, both buildings claimed to comply with the relevant UK building regulations at the time of the build. 

Unacceptable outcomes

From Stockholm to Andover, the story is the same.  A foreseeable fire leading to the total loss of a building followed by a claim that this is a regulatory success. Put simply, this does not pass the smell test. Why are these fire incidents labelled as ‘successes’?

This definition of success is focused on life safety as the essential outcome we would expect. I agree. After all, it is one of the prime jobs of government to protect citizens. However, I am not sure that allowing a building to be completely lost once that is achieved, is an acceptable outcome in all cases. It is too narrow a view and overlooks the wider social impact from the trauma experienced by residents to the financial costs of rebuilding, the burden placed on local services, and the environmental impact of demolition and reconstruction.

The challenge is not just technical, it’s cultural. Are we willing to redefine what success means when it comes to fire to acknowledge resilience? Or is it simply easier and cheaper to accept total building loss as the price that governments believe society is willing to pay?

From conversations across Europe, it’s clear that expectations are shifting. People increasingly assume their homes, and by extension, their lives are protected by more than a narrow reading of the minimum. There is an underlying expectation of buildings to be resilient. Claiming victory because lives were spared can be appropriate when dealing with a major fire. However, a modest fire that grows to make a whole building unusable leads to confusion over what regulations deliver as outcomes. The narrative of “success” feels like a regulatory sleight of hand. More have the belief that they should account not just for evacuation, but also for the preservation of buildings.

A better outcome is possible through a combination of techniques. We know that systems such as sprinklers can drastically reduce the scale and impact of fires. We know that designing for resilience is not only technically achievable, but already proven by specific actors in other sectors, such as logistics and industrial premises. We need the expansion of that thinking to places where the impacts are felt across broader groups and the local community impacts are greater.

At the Business Sprinkler Alliance, we continue to advocate for a more holistic view of fire safety, and one that values protection of life, property and continuity. The examples from the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands all point to the same conclusion: now is the time to raise the bar and start building multi-family homes that genuinely offer that resilience.

For more information about the Business Sprinkler Alliance visit www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org