Fire and rescue services received money from the Housing Ministry to pay for work to review risks on residential buildings higher than 18 meters. The £6 million grant helped services like South Yorkshire to employ specialist staff to identify and review buildings in their area. South Yorkshire received £126,000 from the grant as part of the Building Risk Review program.
Initially, fire and rescue services focused on identifying buildings with ACM cladding. The current phase of work started in October 2020 and involves the inspection of all high-rise residential buildings that are over 18 meters high or have six or more storeys.
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Area Manager Simon Dunker, who is involved with the program in South Yorkshire explained how they approached the work. “Like all fire and rescue services, the government issued us with a list of high-rise residential buildings for which they have requested further information on. Having cross-referenced this list with our own local information, the list of buildings we are inspecting as part of this work has grown to beyond those which are simply over 18 meters high. This is because we want to be really clear about what is and isn’t in scope and be as thorough as we can possibly be.”
South Yorkshire team
List is now publicly available and the service has committed to updating it on a monthly basis
From an original list of around 300 buildings, there are now less than 70 left for the South Yorkshire team to inspect as part of this work and they hope to complete their inspections by the end of December 2021. This list is now publicly available and the service has committed to updating it on a monthly basis.
Mr. Dunker added: “We have invested in a dedicated inspection team to complete this work and intend to complete it as quickly and as thoroughly as we can, to ensure the ongoing safety of residents in South Yorkshire.” The inspection team will raise any issues they find with the building management and work with them to get the problems dealt with as soon as possible.
New recruitment drive
In addition to the risk inspection work, South Yorkshire recently announced a new recruitment drive to boost its work enforcing fire safety laws. It is looking for four new business safety advisors. The advertisement said that work in this area had increased significantly following the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Encouraging people to consider a career in business fire safety, Mr. Dunker said: “Our frontline fire crews rightly get praise for the brilliant job they do responding to 999 calls, but our business fire safety officers play just as an important role in terms of making sure businesses and other premises are complying with safety laws designed to keep people safe.”
