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Fire Statements – Part Five – Preparing to fill out the form

September 14, 2021 10:02 am

An amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 was made from August 2021, known as Planning Gateway One. The change necessitates the completion of a form called a Fire Statement, which is to be submitted with any planning application for a development including a relevant high-rise building for fire safety purposes.

LWF’s Fire Engineering blog series will begin to look at the application form itself, with Part Five including a brief review of when there is a requirement to complete and submit the form and who should be responsible for filling out the form.

The Fire Statement form should be completed by a suitably qualified fire engineer. An example of such is a chartered engineer, registered with the Engineering Council by the Institution of Fire Engineers. Alternatively, the form should be completed by a suitably qualified and competent professional with relevant and demonstrable fire safety experience, sufficient to address the complexity of the proposed design.

The applicant should be familiar with the terms of Article 9A, the amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015.

While a Fire Strategy for a building or development would be suitably detailed, the Fire Statement form only requires information on fire safety to the extent it is relevant to land use planning. The detailed elements of the fire safety strategy should be submitted later at the Building Regulations application stage.

The Fire Statement is not required to demonstrate compliance with the Building Regulations or Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and local planning authorities will not be responsible for any Building Regulation matters.

The contents of a submitted Fire Statement form should address fire safety issues relating to site layout and access and any other element which is connected to land use planning matters. The necessity of including information on the entire development, and not just the individual buildings described in Article 9A, is because the external layout of a site, e.g. the space between buildings is, in itself, a relevant fire safety matter. The entire development in this context is the land identified on the plan, referred to as the ‘red line boundary’.

In part six of this series, LWF will begin to work through the Fire Statement form, reviewing the guidance notes which are relevant whether the form is to be filled out electronically or manually.

Links to all Fire Statement blogs are as follows:

LWF’s blog series on Fire Statements includes information on the type of buildings affected by the changes, details on what information must be included and provides an overview of the application process and form. If you have any queries about your own project or wish to discuss this blog series, please contact LWF on freephone 0800 410 1130.

Lawrence Webster Forrest is a fire engineering consultancy based in Surrey with over 25 years’ experience, which provides a wide range of consultancy services to professionals involved in the design, development and construction and operation of buildings.

While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information.

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