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

September 27, 2021 10:47 am

As of 1 August 2021, an amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 was implemented, known as Planning Gateway One. It requires the completion of a form called a Fire Statement to be submitted with any planning application for a development which includes a relevant high-rise building.

LWF’s Fire Engineering blog series so far has outlined the changes, looked at who should fill out the Fire Statement form and from Part Six onwards, relates to the form itself. Part Seven begins at Section 5 of the form.

Section 5 requires the applicant to submit a site layout plan with block numbering, as per the building schedule referred to in Section 6 of the guidance notes.

The plan can be either inserted into the form itself or included as an attachment, with reference made to the plan in the form, stating the plan number/title, to be treated as the site layout plan. The submitted site layout plan should be consistent with other plan drawings and information submitted.

Fire Statement Form Section 5

Section 6 is in table format and requires the applicant to provide information on the principles, concepts and approach relating to fire safety that have been applied to the development.

It asks for information in three main headings – site information, building information and resident safety information.

The site information column contains columns A-D. Column A is to provide block numbering, which should relate to the plan provided in Section 5.

It is intended that one block should be entered per line. However, where blocks are not relevant buildings for the purpose of the Fire Statement and are identical in terms of design and proposed use, they could be combined. An example would be where several identical 3-storey buildings are proposed, they could be combined in one line of the table. For the blocks to be considered identical, each of the entries if entered singly would have the same information in columns B – J.

Fire Statement Form Section 6

In cases where blocks are a relevant building and are linked by a storey, podium or bridge link and are identical as per columns B – J, they can be combined into one line of the table.

Blocks should not be combined when they are relevant buildings that are not linked by a storey, podium or bridge link, or where there are differences in the information required by columns B to J.

In part eight of this series, LWF will continue by considering columns B – 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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