Protect learning with better fire safety

Despite the rise in school fires since 2020-2021, sprinklers are still not mandatory in newly constructed school buildings in England and Northern Ireland. Iain Cox, chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance, argues that protecting schools from fire equates to preserving education.

There are distressing consequences, both in terms of disruption and financial implications, when educational institutions fall victim to fires. These incidents are a sad reminder of the urgent need to rethink fire safety measures, particularly the insufficient adoption of sprinkler systems in new school constructions.

Sprinklers are still only mandatory in newly constructed school buildings in Scotland and encouraged (being linked to funding) in Wales, with no such mandate in place for England and Northern Ireland.

However, an examination of fire incidents in proportion to the number of school buildings suggests that the fire rate in England aligns closely, as might be expected, with that of Scotland and Wales.

Iain Cox, Chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance, makes the case that protecting schools equates to preserving the continuity of education and agrees with the recommendation from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its second report from its inquiry into the condition of school buildings that government should “reconsider its value for money analysis on fitting fire safety measures.”

Lessons are not being learnt

When you consider the huge costs associated with school fires such as rebuilding, temporary relocation, loss of equipment and pupils’ academic work, we are still not learning the lesson about fire and its impact, and building schools without sprinkler systems.

Fewer than one-in-six new schools have been built with a sprinkler system installed yet the fire incident statistics for England in primary/secondary and other educational establishments has seen a rise from 250 in 2020/21 to 341 in 2021/22.

The monetary ramifications are equally dire, with the average claim for fire incidents through the DfE’s Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA) scheme in the past three reported years were £437,155, £341,282, and £197,903 respectively.

These are significant figures and indicates that fires in school buildings are clearly more significant than is often thought. It must be remembered that the RPA, being government backed, operates differently to commercial insurers. Insurers need to assess the risk, and work with organisations to reduce their exposure.

Three school fires

An early evening fire last October at Rodmersham Primary School near Sittingbourne quickly engulfed the building. Whilst the Fire and Rescue service brought the fire under control, there was extensive damage to the main school building.

The following day, a statement from Kent County Council said that temporary premises would be arranged for the school’s 117 pupils. It was later reported that students had several days of online learning, prior to classes taking place in temporary locations including the village hall. The school will now need to be rebuilt.

Another significant school fire incident occurred on August 17th, 2023 in Bolton. The blaze caused devastating damage to the very heart of the SS Simon and Jude CE Primary School, with the main teaching spaces, central hall and kitchens destroyed by fire. The school has over 600 pupils.

With students having returned to classes after the summer holiday, this necessitated temporary arrangements or alternative spaces for classrooms undergoing reconstruction. The ripple effects of such incidents are far-reaching, with fires causing significant disruption even if they do not engulf entire school premises. Given the short period of time available it means that students are now having to navigate the challenges of remediation efforts and prolonged disruption that could span several months.

An event that did not attract as much attention was a fire that broke out at the unsprinklered Ash Green Primary School in Mixenden on 1 February 2022. The fire destroyed a quarter of the key stage two block and impacted the entire school population.

The consequences of past decisions

The severe fire at Ash Green Primary required 10 crews and one aerial ladder platform from the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. Despite their efforts there was such extensive damage to the single-storey upper school building that the upper school had to close. The pupils from this part of the school were displaced to temporary classrooms or further alternative spaces.

The estimated cost of the upper school rebuild is £4.5 million and it is expected to be completed in 2025 – that’s three years of ongoing change and potential disruption to the education of 500 pupils.

It is worth stressing that the fire at Ash Green Primary was not about the destruction of the whole school. Whilst such events garner the headlines, fires that cause damage to two or three education spaces or classrooms can really have an impact. Put simply, a school just runs out of space to relocate students in such an incident, and it leads to the work of an entire school/department and the delivery of education being hampered.

A thousand school children displaced

Whilst many may be struck by the financial consequences, the key item across these three events is that over 1,200 pupils were displaced and have seen weeks of challenge to their lessons.

That challenge comes in the form of disruption which has meant parents adjusting childcare, trying to continue lessons at home and dealing with the impact of the event with their children. That impact will continue until they find temporary accommodation, but that was not always in the same place as the original school.

Government is insistent that even a week’s interruption to their education would have a negative impact on a child’s attainment. Their stance on this matter is so resolute that they impose a daily fine of £60 on parents for taking their children out of school. Fires such as those described have an even greater impact.

Building Bulletin 100

The government first consulted on a revised version of Building Bulletin 100 (BB100): Design for fire safety in school in 2016. As of August 2023, it has been 24 months since the last consultation on this topic, with the last one having closed on August 18th, 2021. The consultation document had no impact assessment supporting the assertions in the document or an indication of the impact fires have on the education of pupils.

The BSA has always highlighted that the current BB100 sets the right expectations around the protection of schools and the continuity of education. It states that the school should be fully functional within 24 hours of a fire, apart from the room where the fire occurred.

The BSA wants the government to explicitly maintain these objectives in the revised BB100 so that fewer schools are damaged or destroyed by fire. Better still, the government should make property protection a consideration for the fire safety Building Regulations to effectively protect all buildings of significant social and/or economic value from fire. Automatic sprinklers would be a key tool in achieving this outcome.

Fire can have a lasting and devastating impact on both schools and communities and must be avoided and minimised. Schools should be designed to withstand the risks they will be exposed to whether that is fire, flood, theft, or storm, etc. Too often, these considerations are limited.

The impact of fires on schools can be minimised. We build school buildings to use over tens of years. The likelihood of a fire over that period is not negligible and a fire incident becomes more likely. Similarly, if the average fire claim into the government’s own RPA is several hundred thousand pounds per incident, and the disruptions to hundreds of pupils, it makes you wonder how we can we safely conclude that fire is not an issue. It rather begs the opposite - are we missing the point when new schools are constructed without the protection afforded by sprinklers?