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Fire Statements – Part Nine – How to fill out the application

October 11, 2021 11:24 am

As of the 1^st August 2021 and the introduction of Planning Gateway One, (as an amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order), a form called a Fire Statement is to be submitted with any planning application for a development which includes a relevant high-rise building.

LWF’s blog series on the Fire Statements has outlined the background and implementation of Planning Gateway One, looked at the process to be followed and who should fill out the form. The blogs from Part Six onwards deal with the content of the Fire Statement form itself.

Section 6 requests Site Information in table format, requiring the applicant to detail the principles, concepts and approach relating to fire safety that have been applied to the development. Part Nine of the blog series begins at the second column of the table – Building Information – which contains sub-columns e-g.

Fire Statement Form Section 6

Section 6/Building Information/Column e asks for information on the standards relating to fire safety and/or the approach applied, including to external wall systems. In essence the applicant should state the standard document used and any key departures from the standard document outlined in section 7. The information given in this section should demonstrate the application of fire safety considerations as they relate to land use planning and be proportionate to the proposed use(s) and scale of building information in column e.

The answer must be one of the options given in the table extract, below:

Fire Statement Section 6 Column E documents options

Section 6/Building Information/Column f is concerned with any proposed balconies and their characteristics in relation to fire safety. There are three choices of answer for Column f:

no balconies;
class A2- s1, d0 or better; or
worse than class A2- s1, d0

Classifications are in accordance with BS EN 13501-1:2018, Fire classification of construction products and building elements Part 1: Classification using data from reaction to test fires.

The classifications are split into three parts, the main classification, the smoke classification and the flaming droplet classification as follows:

The main classification letter (i.e. A1, A2, B, C, D, E or F) relates to the reaction to fire performance with respect to combustibility.
s1, s2 and s3 are smoke production indicators, with s1 indicating the lowest production.
d0, d1 and d2 refer to flaming droplets/particles with d0 indicating the lowest production.

It should be noted that when a classification for a product includes s3, d2, this indicates that there is no upper limit set for smoke production and/or flaming droplets/particles.

Section 6/Building Information/Column g relates to external wall systems and follows the same format, reference and classifications as Column f for balconies. Should any additional information or explanation be required, it can be given in Section 8 of the form.

In part ten of this series, LWF will continue by discussing columns H-J of Section 6 of the Fire Statement Form.

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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