Consulting on changes to fire legislation
What’s in the pipeline? The Home Office is consulting on proposals to amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) to enable it to strengthen the regulation of fire safety matters in high-rise buildings and beyond. It appears that the Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) is intending to charge those found to be in breach of the legislation for its enforcement services. There’s also a proposal to bring in competency requirements for fire risk assessors and to give the FRS viewpoint more prominence when new builds and alterations are proposed.
Although this is a consultation at this stage, many of these changes will almost certainly take place as there’s strong cross-party support for them.