Improving fire safety requirements for supported housing

The project is one of 14 in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Fire Programme, which was launched in July 2015 and involves working in partnership with all in the sector to improve the effectiveness of the fire regulations.

Each of the programme’s 14 projects look at specific areas of fire regulation. The Fire Safety Requirements for the Supported Housing Sector project is aimed at ensuring any changes made to the fire regulations produce living arrangements for people in supported housing that afford an adequate level of fire safety reflecting residents’ needs.

At the current stage of the project, the working group has commissioned a design guide to allocate a building’s fire safety measures, and a code of practice for outlining a building’s management procedures. “With vital input from different parts of the supported housing sector including service providers, these resources will be developed to work interdependently and are being created with the safety of building occupants foremost in mind,” says fire engineer Michael Belsham. “They are intended to give equal consideration to the safety of residents, the management procedures used by service providers and the duty of care of building owners.”

Read more about the Fire Programme

Please note that no definition of supported housing is included in the material but refers to housing where there are on-site support workers and where tenants may need assistance to exit the building in the event of a fire.