New Era Dawns - Lessons Learned from Planning Gateway One
Fire Industry Association
Fire Industry Association | Leading Excellence in Fire Safety since 1916
By Mark Wilson
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Check out the other insightful future-thinking essays at firefuturetoday.com/fia .
In the Oscar winning film As Good as It Gets, there is a memorable line from Jack Nicholson: “I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”?
I cannot help but draw parallels to our current situation in the building safety industry.?
As we embark on creating cultural change, we might be at risk of merely “describing the water” without any practical experience to understand how all this change will affect the day-to-day work of professionals, such as fire engineers.
In this article, I explore the opportunities arising from the new building safety regime for the fire safety community and reflect on the practical realities created by part of the regime, Planning Gateway One (PGO), since it has been operational for over two years.??
PGO’s insights may offer a glimpse into how the rest of the regime will manifest, in practical terms. In particular, following the regulator becoming the building control body for higher risk buildings.
In August 2021, the Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive began its work as statutory consultee for planning applications in England that include tall residential or educational accommodation buildings.?
Commenting on designs for tall residential buildings right from the outset of a project’s life is a direct response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations in her 2018 report, Building a Safer Future - Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety.
Our input, badged under the title Planning Gateway One, is delivered by a small team, including fire safety design professionals. They review development proposals and provide responses and comments about fire safety to local planning authorities, to support their decisions on planning applications. As a key part of the BSR, PGO can tell us a lot about industry’s appetite for change and what that change entails.
Analysing PGO’s impact and role reveals an industry adapting to change. In its first full year of operation, in 2022, HSE objected to 56% of planning applications on the grounds of fire safety. In 2023 (January to November) HSE objected to 39% of applications.
This reduction in the number of objections raised by the regulator reflects the fact that applicants are adapting in design terms to the more stringent regime.?
Greater scrutiny about fire safety in the early design process is encouraging fire safety design to be seen differently.
This is creating an environment in which fire engineers are having to work collaboratively with architects, engineers, and designers, rather than being brought in after the planning process to “fix” a design that has been established by planning permission.?
Fire safety design is now a consenting and programme risk in a much more immediate way than ever before. The implication is that fire engineers need to be involved at earlier stages of a project programme. This will involve educating clients, architects and other consultants about these consenting risks and the added value fire specialists’ early involvement will bring to the overall project.
So, fire engineers will now need to work collaboratively as part of the early design team to influence architects and designers toward the right balance between creativity, return on investment and safety standards. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.?
There is no doubt this kind of approach reduces consenting risks, saves time, and reduces costs later. If the “big ticket” design features and their interactions are designed properly from the start, then subsequent regulatory stages should be less onerous.
Developers are increasingly amending their plans based on BSR feedback as a statutory consultee at the planning stage. For example, by adding additional firefighting shafts, moving fire mains, improving fire appliance accessibility, removing firefighter hazards, and changing designs to protect escape routes and prevent fire spread to other buildings.
Obviously, this change is not all sunshine and rainbows. Fire specialists are often put in difficult positions by demanding clients who react badly to consenting problems as a result of fire safety design. There is no magic fix for this, and fire professionals should be prepared to have difficult conversations with clients.
However, early fire safety design scrutiny is already raising design standards and enhancing the status and role of fire engineering, which should provide greater weight to the views of fire safety design professionals in discussions with sceptical clients. As the consenting risks become more obvious to clients, the situation should improve over time.
An improving design environment at the planning stage bodes well for the BSR’s role in higher risk building control at Gateways Two and Three. The registration process for higher risk buildings brings awareness to ownership responsibilities and duties, contributing to a stricter monitoring system starting in April 2024 with the safety case regime. This will inevitably bring with it tangible benefits to residents in the medium and longer term as it focuses attention and raises the standard of information held about higher risk buildings.
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All of this indicates a departure from the status quo. It points to an evolving, more engaged, fulfilling, and critical role for fire safety design professionals throughout the life of a higher risk building, from inception to development, refurbishment, and maintenance.
How fire safety professionals work is changing and is definitely not 'as good as it gets.'
To read more insightful future-thinking, check out the Fire Future Today anthology here .
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