Vast majority of social housing high rises do not have fire alarms or sprinklers, new research reveals

In response to the research (see box below), the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) called on the government to make it mandatory to retrofit sprinklers in high rises, while the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) called the data “shocking”. 

Both bodies cited research showing that sprinklers suppress or contain fires on 99% of occasions, reducing the risk to life and property damage.

Retrofit was particularly low in London, where of 771 towers owned by 14 local authorities, just 41 had been fitted with sprinklers and 43 had been fitted with fire alarms.

Charlie Pugsley, assistant commissioner for fire safety at the London Fire Brigade (LFB), said the numbers of sprinklers in high rises in the capital were “still very low”, adding that “we would like to see this increase”. 

He added that sprinklers are “not a luxury” and that they “save lives and also reduce risk to the firefighters who have to tackle the fires”. 

A spokesperson for London Councils pointed to the “extremely challenging” financial context and said it was seeking more government funding to support fire safety work. 

Inside Housing’s data was gathered through Freedom of Information requests sent to large stock-holding local authorities and voluntary requests for information from large housing associations.

The data covers 1,768 blocks with at least 87,000 individual flats included in the survey, meaning it covers almost a third of the social housing high rises around the country. 

Following six deaths at Lakanal House in south London in 2009, a coroner’s inquest held four years later in 2013 resulted in a recommendation to government that social landlords be “encouraged” to retrofit sprinklers in their high-rise buildings. 

However, behind the scenes officials advised ministers that doing so would be “a big and essentially pointless task”, as without new funding the encouragement would likely be ignored. 

Even after the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the government denied requests for funding to retrofit sprinklers in council housing, branding them “additional not essential” for fire safety. 

The cost of a new sprinkler system is estimated at around £500,000 per block, with a wide variance for the size of the building. The RIBA estimated the cost at £1,750 for a two-bedroom flat. 

Birmingham City Council has spent £93m installing 181 sprinkler systems to its stock of 188 high-rise buildings – 64% of the total sprinkler installations in the survey. It said its blocks were on average 70 years old, and had necessitated “difficult decisions” about safety.

Southampton City Council has spent £40m to fit sprinklers to 19 of 21 high-rise buildings, the second-largest figure. It said the decision to do so had been taken before the Grenfell Tower fire (see box). Alarms have been fitted in 20.  

The council said the devices had successfully extinguished five fires before the fire service attended. 

Professor Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, told Inside Housing that the UK places a particular emphasis on ‘compartmentation’ to protect buildings, while other jurisdictions prefer to rely on suppression. 

“In the US it would be unthinkable not to have sprinklers in a high-rise building, but there is much less focus on fire doors, for example,” he said. “In the UK, the additional layer of fire protection from early suppression is not valued.”

UK guidance seeks to ensure that a fire will stay within the flat of origin until it is extinguished by firefighters, through the use of fire doors, fire-stopping and walls and floors with two-hour fire resistance. 

But this can be compromised by poor management and combustible materials on the external facade (as was the case at Grenfell and Lakanal House), or even by fire simply jumping up via open windows. 

It can also be undermined by modern construction methods, such as timber frame or modular, which can be more vulnerable to fire spread than traditional masonry construction. 

“If the minimum standard was set 20 years ago, but you have new hazards arriving in the built environment every day, it may no longer be appropriate,” Professor Rein explained. 

Research from the University of Leeds in 2021 also showed that there was an increased risk to life in high-rise fires, in part because it takes much longer for firefighters to access the building, reach the floor where the fire is and extinguish the fire. 

Its analysis of response times showed that it takes more than 27 minutes from a 999 call to water being applied to a fire in a high rise, compared to seven minutes and 45 seconds in a house. 

Sprinklers have been mandatory for new buildings taller than 11 metres since November 2020. 

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry also recommended the use of evacuation alert systems in October 2019, as part of a broader recommendation that ‘Plan B’ evacuation plans should be developed for high rises if stay put advice failed. 

Its investigation into the night of the fire had revealed that firefighters had no way to raise the alarm quickly once they decided to evacuate the building.

Despite promising to implement all of the inquiry’s recommendations, nothing has been done to bring this forward, with a research project on evacuating high rises yet to publish its findings. 

Current statutory guidance discourages fire alarms due to a risk of false alarms – an issue that would not occur with a manual system designed to be operated by firefighters during an incident. 

Professor Rein said that the absence of fire alarms was “more concerning” than the absence of sprinklers. 

“Evacuation is such an important layer of protection – if the fire has breached compartmentation you need to have a way to tell people to get out,” he said.

Councils that have not fitted sprinklers or fire alarms told Inside Housing they followed the advice of assessors who tended not to recommend them, and focused instead on keeping communal areas sterile and improving and repairing features such as fire doors. 

The English government was contacted for comment. 

Two Welsh local authorities - Cardiff and Swansea - responded to say they had collectively fitted 12 sprinkler systems to the 20 blocks they own. The Welsh government has provided funding for sprinkler retrofit in social housing.  

Update at 11.45 on 13.6.23

L&Q’s response to the initial survey gave a ’no return’ for the number of sprinklers in high rise residential buildings, along with a comment that they are not required under regulations. This was misunderstood as implying that there were no sprinkler systems fitted - when in fact the association had not been able to collect the data. The story was updated with the correct figure (52) when it was provided by L&Q after publication and the total figures were also updated to reflect this change.  

The story was also updated with additional information about the Welsh Government’s position. 

Update at 10.30am on 14.6.23

Following publication of this article, a government spokesperson provided the following statement: “People must be and feel safe in their homes. We have introduced changes so that more new buildings must have sprinkler systems.

"Recommendations about individual buildings should be made by independent assessors with the right expertise.

“We are committed to delivering proposals that enhance the safety of residents whose ability to self-evacuate in an emergency may be compromised, and will set out more when the results of our most recent consultations have been fully analysed.”

The government was first notified of the story on Wednesday 7 June and asked to provide a response by Friday 9 June.