Sense behind a fire extinguisher ban

Lots of coverage in the nationals today of landlords taking extinguishers out of blocks of flats in Bournemouth on the say-so of their fire risk assessors. There's speculation that it will be copied across the country. My heart sinks, because it's going to be so easy for the usual suspects to spin this as more health and safety gone mad.

But there's sense in the assessors' thinking. In the fire marshal training programme it runs for employers, the London Fire Brigade won't teach marshals how to use extinguishers. Their argument is that under pressure people are not going to take time to read the labels and check they've got the right type of extinguisher (using water on an oil/fat fire will turn you into a fireball) and having extinguishers sitting there gives people a false sense of confidence that they can fight something they should really be running away from.

Underlying this is the fact employers are in a kind of limbo about fire precautions since the Fire Safety Order scrapped the old system of fire brigades signing off premises. Now nobody can give them a certificate to assure them they are on the right side of the law. The fire brigades themselves aren't much help in many cases, because if you ask them how to make your premises compliant, they more-or-less say "do a risk assessment, put in the controls it suggests and, if you have a fire, we'll tell you if it was right when we decide whether we are going to prosecute you."

This is going to make for a lot of caution on the part of employers, landlords and anyone else in charge of premises and the fire assessors they contract. Stripping out the fire extinguishers may just be the start.