Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:12 pm on 1 March 2007.
I cannot provide an exact figure, though I can repeat the phrase that there will be very few. I am coming on to say that we will write to MPs who signed the early-day motion. In many ways it will be a repeat of what I am telling the House now, but we will send a copy of the risk assessment tool on a CD, so that hon. Members can use it for themselves if they choose to and see what risk assessment would apply to the schools in their own constituencies.
That tool will help a school to establish whether it is at high, medium or low risk, to decide on the action that it needs to take and to establish whether a fire sprinkler system is necessary. Similarly, a cost-benefit analysis tool will help schools to decide whether a sprinkler represents good value. In private finance projects, where it is easier to account for the whole-life cost of a building, lower insurance premiums mean that the cost of fire sprinklers is recouped within 10 to 12 years.
I launched these new materials earlier this week, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us, and will ensure that they are properly disseminated to local authorities, all MPs and chief fire officers. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether I could go further towards forcing the use of the tool. What I would say on that is that we will refer in the guidance to the need to use the tool to measure risk—and it would be a foolish authority that ignored it and failed to have proper regard to that guidance. I would also say that I am still interested in whether there should be a presumption in favour of the use of sprinklers. It would then be up to authorities and schools to demonstrate to the community why not. However, I need to discuss and develop that further with officials before I take a final decision.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be familiar—he referred to it—with the Government's unprecedented capital investment in school building. There has been as much school building in the past five years as in the previous 25 years. By 2020, we will have rebuilt or refurbished all secondary schools through "Building Schools for the Future" and half of all primary schools through the primary capital programme. That is why now is the right time to give fire sprinklers in schools a higher priority, as he said. Clearly, it is most sensible and cost-effective to install fire sprinklers as part of this building work rather than later on when the additional cost of retrofitting sprinklers can often be prohibitive.
So the suite of guidance on building specifications for "Building Schools for the Future" will include a pamphlet on the specifications for fire sprinklers. We will consult industry on that pamphlet later on this spring, so that the document will be available in the summer. The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to some of the delays around publishing some of these documents, guidance and so forth. It is very much informed by the work that has been going on with the fire safety industry, chief fire officers, the LGA and my officials, to whom I am grateful, because we wanted to ensure that we had secured consensus around both cost and risk. That is why—because of the work that I instigated—there has been something of a delay.
I hope I have offered the right hon. and learned Gentleman my strongest assurances that this issue is of the utmost concern to me. I am taking robust action to raise the profile of sprinklers within schools in order to crack down on the problem of arson—and school fire more generally—and ensure that every school remains the safest possible place to be.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Six o'clock.
Annotations
Kevin Lohse
Posted on 2 Mar 2007 6:34 pm (Report this annotation)
"Robust Action" = another phamplet to be cursorily scanned then forgotten.