Interesting new approach to fire safety; from this morning's Times
Dan those interfering Unions!
Jim Carroll

UNIONS' ANGER OVER PLANS TO DOWNGRADE SCHOOL SPRINKLERS
Nicola Woolcock

Plans to soften guidance over sprinkler systems at new schools show "a total disregard for the health and safety of children and staff", union leaders told the education secretary yesterday.
The original guidance for schools, published in 2007, said: "All new schools should have fire sprinklers installed except in a few low-risk schools."
The proposed update to the Department for Education's (DfE) Design in Fire Safety in Schools, published last year, stated that "building regulations do not require the installation of fire sprinkler suppression systems in school buildings for life safety. Therefore [guidelines] no longer include an expectation that most new school buildings will be fitted with them."
Leaders of the Fire Brigades' Union (FBU), the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers wrote to Justine Greening seeking "urgent reassurances" about draft rules which, they said, would lead to fewer sprinklers. They expressed alarm that the "expectation" that sprinklers should be fitted in new schools in England had been removed.
The unions said the government proposals also compromised safety by changing rules on how buildings were compartmentalised to contain fire. The government insisted, however, that the guidance clarified existing wording and that the same standards would apply.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, said: "It is staggering we still have to have this debate in the current circumstances. It highlights the endless problems we have faced when raising fire safety issues over several years." Kensington Aldridge Academy, the school that opened in 2014 beside Grenfell Tower, is not fitted with sprinklers. Nor were there sprinklers in the 1970s block, which housed around 600 people and recently had an £8.6 million refurbishment in which combustible cladding and insulation was fitted.
Since the fire, which claimed at least 79 lives, local authorities have been examining their housing stock. Thou-sands of buildings, including hospitals, leisure centres and offices, have been fitted with cladding in the past 30 years.
Fire safety assessors said they were inundated with requests for inspections from councils, one of which, in Croydon, south London, has said it will fit its high-rise blocks with sprinklers.
The government faces pressure to announce who will lead the public inquiry into the fire promised by Theresa May. Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, wrote to Mrs May urging transparency in the process, including "timescales involved and likely milestones". Blaze survivors and the families of those killed should be instrumental in draw¬ing up the scope of the inquiry and be granted "core participant" status, giving them access to evidence and letting them suggest lines of inquiry, he said.
John Healy, Labour's housing spokesman, called for the release of correspondence on fire regulations between four ministers and the all party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group after a high-rise fire in 2009.
In one exchange reported by the BBC, Stephen Williams, a former Liberal Democrat minister, told the group: "I have neither seen nor heard anything that would suggest that consideration of these potential changes is urgent."
The group replied: "We're at a loss to understand how you had concluded that credible and independent evidence which had life safety implications, was NOT considered urgent."
The dispute over advice on sprinklers in new schools also raises concerns about an apparent clash between regulations and the drive to "cut red tape".
Figures earlier this year showed that there were more than 700 fires at schools in London between 2009 and early 2017, but that sprinklers were installed in only 15 cases.
The DfE said: "There will be no change to the fire safety laws for schools or our determination to protect children's safety. It has always been the case that where the risk assessment required for any new building recommends sprinklers are installed to keep children safe, they must be fitted."