Practical Fire Safety Guidance for Existing Premises with Sleeping Accommodation

The Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers welcomes the revised guide. Many of our members will fall into the original Guidance for Small Bed and Breakfast and Self-Catering Premises so we particularly welcome the retention of this as Annex 1, which is almost a word for word transfer of this very clear and useful Guidance.

Under the previous guidance, there was quite a jump for businesses between the
Guidance for Small Bed and Breakfast and Self-Catering Premises and the Practical
Fire Safety Guidance for Small Premises Providing Sleeping Accommodation, and again
a jump to the Practical Fire Safety Guidance for Medium and Large Premises Providing
Sleeping Accommodation. In the new combined guide, there will be just one jump, from
Annex 1 to the Main Guide.

The proposed Main Guide paragraph 6 states that Annex 1 properties do not have
letting or guest accommodation below a ground floor or above a first floor. Given the
low risk nature of the smallest businesses sleeping up to 10 people, we wondered if it
would be possible to include these smallest businesses which have one or two
bedrooms on a second floor, always ensuring that the escape route and alarm
benchmarks are in operation.

For Annex 1, the cut-off for having a smoke alarm in each bedroom is 3 bedrooms, an
alarm in a corridor or hall within 3m of the bedroom door being judged sufficient. We
suggest that this threshold is increased to include 4 bedrooms.
We consider that sleeping up to 10 isn’t related to the number of bedrooms as long as
there is a clear bedroom door to exit in play.

We consider that the provision of Carbon Monoxide (CO) alarms is added in for all selfcatering
premises. While not strictly a Fire Prevention element in itself, it would make sense to have this in place in a document which already details smoke and heat alarm requirements.

New technology has made it easier to link smoke alarms and while this has been suggested as an option for businesses, we suggest adding the words eg by Bluetooth to Paragraphs 13 and 32 of Annex 1.

It is difficult to ascertain the effect of self-catering businesses which previously came under the scope of Practical Fire Safety Guidance for Small Premises Providing Sleeping Accommodation that were small enough to be excluded from the Practical Fire Safety Guidance for Medium and Large Premises Providing Sleeping Accommodation.

The Impact Assessment gives comfort that this change will not adversely affect businesses.

Glamping is new since the Guidance was published, and is different though similar to Annex 2 Holiday Camping and Caravan Sites. This includes Yurts, pods, tree houses etc. There was a serious fire at a glamping pod in Cheshire
http://www.cheshirefire.gov.uk/news-events/incidents/fire-in-a-camping-pod-in-kingsley with clothes left drying on a log burner. We consider that these structures should be brought within scope of the Guidance.

We agree with Option 2 of the impact assessment, which is the proposed new combined guide.