The prospect of a full range of third party accredited schemes for products and services in fire safety was held out at the official launch of the BAFE SP203-4 emergency lighting scheme.

Sir Ken Knight: People need to be able to rely on competent fire safety service providers

“It’s in the public interest. This is a good scheme and is part of an emerging suite of accreditation schemes. I’ll be happy when there’s a scheme for all parts of fire safety.”

Mr Cox said the fire risk assessment is the basis on which all fire safety systems in a building should be based on. It may be surprising, therefore, that as things stood, such a core activity can be undertaken by anyone, he said.

Looking forward to a unified standard of competency for fire risk assessors, Mr Cox added: “Fire risk assessments are the genesis of fire safety, so there needs to be a level of competency against which conscientious people have something to benchmark.”

The government’s chief fire and rescue adviser, Sir Ken Knight, said that last time he addressed BAFE was in the aftermath of the Lakanal House fire which was “a tragedy of unknown proportions recently”. He commended the emergency lighting scheme saying that it helped both the public and the industry too, by providing a level playing field based on quality.

“It is evident that where the responsible person has the legal duty to protect people, then they need to be able to use competent people to design, install and maintain fire safety measures in a building.

“With a third party accreditation scheme, the person having the responsibility for the safety of the building can – to some no small measure – be satisfied that they have complied with their responsibilities.”

Bernard Pratley and Chris Watts from the Industry Committee for Emergency Lighting gave practical examples of the importance of emergency lighting and the need for it to be properly supplied.

The first company to gain SP203-4 registration Babcock Dynacorp, was  presented with its certificate by Sir Ken Knight.