More guidance to support fire legislation and a closer link between the fire safety management of buildings and third party certification were two issues which came out of a recent cross-industry initiative.

The roundtable discussion last month saw MPs and representatives from the fire safety community respond to the question: 'Is it time for certification of buildings?'

The conclusions of the group, which are now available in this executive summary, include:

• More/clearer guidance is needed to support fire safety legislation, especially for smaller organisations
• The emphasis should be on better compliance of existing regulations, rather than new regulations
• New methods of construction need to be examined as to how they fit with current building regulation and legislation
• Certification of whole buildings, or a fire safety management code of practice, could be a link between building regulations and subsequent duties under fire safety legislation

The group agreed to explore ways of developing voluntary guidance for the responsible person, potentially in the form of building management guidance or whole building certification.

Participants included shadow fire minister, Chris Williamson, MP; joint chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety Group, Roger Williams MP; former fire minister Jim Fitzpatrick MP; and Department for Communities and Local Government building regulations (fire safety) policy lead, Brian Martin.

The roundtable was facilitated by Exova Warringtonfire and chaired by info4fire.com editor, Ron Alalouff.

Download the executive summary