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Minimising the impact of fire on children's education should be a first priority. Despite the no. of school fires continuing to rise, the installation of sprinklers are still not mandatory in schools in England or Northern Ireland. In Scotland, they are required by law in newly constructed school buildings and are a condition of government grant funding in Wales. Our Chair, Iain Cox, discusses why this must change in our featured article in RICS publication here: https://bit.ly/48FcofF #ThinkSprinkler #FireSafety #BuildingRegulations

Why isn't England mandating school sprinklers?

Why isn't England mandating school sprinklers?

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Mark Jones

Emergency manager and planner

9mo

10 years ago, I lobbied a local authority very strongly in favour of adding sprinkler protection in a new academy that was being scheduled. The Local Authority planners were entirely resistant because they didn’t consider fire to be a significant risk to schoolchildren and sprinklers were not mandated. I agreed with their assessment of the risks to children but expressed concern on the potential economic loss that might result from arson, which was quite prevalent in schools. They indicated that adding sprinklers would add an additional 4% cost but I countered, indicating that, if they were adding sprinklers above the statutory requirement, there might be scope to use a cheaper system. This too was dismissed out of hand. They remained unmoved and I was left feeling that the main reason was that those making the building decisions were not sufficiently connected to those who would bear the costs and impacts of any fires which might occur at some time later. The learning I took was that any disconnect or distance between those who might endure building fire losses (and consequent business impacts), and those who might have made an investment to prevent them, leads to a risk of inadequate consideration of engineered protection.

Michael Mercado

Fire Protection Designer/Project Manager

9mo

Is this really even a debate?! FIRE SPRINKLERS SAVE LIVES!!!

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Andrew Fisher

Developing and sustaining innovative fire sprinkler solutions

9mo

People often ask me about the risk of school children vandalising the heads, but I have not heard any accounts of this actually happening.

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Les Ryder (Chartered Building Engineer)

Technical Director at Hertfordshire Building Control

9mo

Because it’s not life safety.

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