All new residential buildings over 18m or seven storeys should be legally required to have two stair cores, senior firefighters in England have said. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has called on the government to legislate for multiple mandatory staircases in new high-rises, as well as the installation of sprinklers and lifts in existing tall residential buildings.
The intervention comes after the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities *(DLUHC) warned over summer that tall residential buildings with only one escape route were unlikely to meet building regulations and would need robust fire safety provisions.
Some architects – including Morris + Company and Hawkins\Brown – have already overhauled high-rise housing plans to insert second staircases into blocks, while other tower schemes – such as at Meridian Water – have recently been approved with only one staircase.
In Scotland, new high-rise residential buildings over 18m are already required to have two escape staircases. Fire strategy for residential blocks typically involves residents staying in their homes – and trusting that fires will be compartmentalised and hastily extinguished. However, high-rise fire safety is being rethought after the Grenfell Tower disaster, where fire spread around the building and the ‘stay put’ policy failed.
The NFCC said some residents do evacuate buildings during fires and that extra staircases would protect them. It cites data from the London Fire Brigade, which reported 154 cases where 10 or more people evacuated from a six-storey or taller block of flats between April 2019 and April 2022. A total of just under 8,500 people evacuated their buildings rather than staying put before, during or after the fire service arrived, it said.
Gavin Tomlinson, NFCC protection and business safety scrutiny committee chair said: ‘We are calling on the government to ensure that all new high-rise residential buildings over 18m, or seven storeys, have more than one fire escape staircase.
‘In the event of a fire, a correctly designed second staircase removes the risk of a single point of failure, buying critical time for firefighting activities and providing residents with multiple escape routes.’ NFCC chair Mark Hardingham added: ‘The government should be commended on the improvements it has made, such as banning combustible cladding and requiring sprinklers at 11m [high].
‘However, we urge the government to now publish an updated work plan for the review of Approved Document B to give regulators, the public, and the wider fire safety industry confidence that the government is still committed to reform.’ A spokesperson for DLUHC said that the government would launch a consultation on the number of staircases needed in residential buildings in the near future.
‘We will shortly be launching a consultation on building regulations and fire safety guidance, including the number of staircases needed to ensure residents are safe in the event of a fire,’ he said.
