Improving Fire Safety Management in Social Housing

As the government continues to review the Approved Documents under the new Building Safety Regulations, it’s essential that housing providers, developers, and safety professionals are equipped to respond.

Andy Frankum, the Chair of the National Social Housing Fire Strategy Group writes about his reflections of recent events in relation to fire safety management and some guidance that will assist others in meeting the fire safety challenges that are in front of us.

‘I wrote an article in 2023 on the subject of competence in fire safety management within a social housing environment. With recent events highlighting some poor practices and negative behaviours, it’s time to reflect and revisit that guidance to see what is important and how we can learn from these cases and really change the culture for the better.

Consistency in approach and leading by example are two key ingredients in leading positive fire safety practices

Some key advice includes:

• Ensure all staff have a good basic knowledge of fire safety awareness, including directors and board members.
• Monitor not only significant risks and change, but also consider the cumulative impact of smaller changes and how effective your control measures are on a regular basis.
• Foster a culture of ownership and accountability. From the housing officer to the board, a one team approach to ensuring safety is key to all roles and must form part of performance measurement and expected behaviours.
• Regularly monitor and assess competence levels of staff, ensuring practical application of fire safety, good communication is embedded and everyone understands the risks.
• Get a good handle on your data and regularly review performance.
• Have robust processes in place to create a positive culture of openness and honesty, ensuring investigations don’t look to blame but to seek out what went well and what did not, so that lessons can be learnt and shared.
• Establish a robust management system, that identifies key risks, provides assurance and ensures resources are deployed in the most appropriate way to secure the safety of residents.
• Listen to colleagues, residents, stakeholders, contractors and others. Learning can come from many directions, and it can be transformative, as it allows pragmatic and positive practices to deliver safer outcomes, the collective position of all ideas is key to driving safety in all forms that it comes in.

Safety requires a multi-faceted approach, it must be customer focused, resident centric and it continues to develop to improve, innovate and develop best practice not at a building level but at an organisational one, if we are truly focused on keeping people safe from fire.

We must create a legacy that is fit for the future and protects all residents now and in the future.

Delivering fire safety basics really well, will provide a robust foundation to develop your approach to fire safety, will enable resources to be deployed for maximum impact and help to improve behaviours and competence.

It should aid lessons to be learnt, which will in time help to prevent a future tragedy, but I hope the real outcomes will help residents to feel safe in their home, a right that everyone should enjoy and enable them to thrive.

In summary, fire risk management is not managed by one person, one department, it can only be managed by everyone playing their part in helping to keep everyone fire safe.’

Andy will be delivering our one day Fire Risk Management Online Training on Tuesday 18th November 2025. Attend this online course to find out how to navigate the current regulatory framework on building safety and fire risk management to ensure your organisation is prepared and compliant.

Whether you’re updating your policies or preparing for regulatory scrutiny, this training will help you embed robust fire safety systems and foster a culture of compliance.

Course Content:

• Implementing an effective fire safety management system to ensure compliance
• Holistic approaches to fire safety assessing risks from the structural to the individual level
• Understanding the roles and responsibilities of Duty Holders
• The Gateway Process: implications for compliance at different phases of the building lifecycle (from design to construction and management)
• Monitoring and assessing for continuous improvement
• Culture change and collaborative approaches to risk management: ensuring an organisation wide awareness of new expectations and regulations
• Planning and compliance for Resident Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (RPEEPs), especially for vulnerable residents
• Proactive and preventative measures to assess risks

This training is for professionals from social housing, local authorities, and the construction industry responsible for designing, constructing and managing buildings.

View course content and book your place