Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPS)
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Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEPs) consultation
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NPC EVIDENCE FOR THE CONSULTATION
Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans
Introduction
The National Pensioners’ Convention (NPC) is Britain’s biggest independent organisation of older people, representing around one thousand local, regional, and national pensioner groups with a total of 1.5 million members. The NPC is run by and for pensioners and campaigns for improvements to the income, health and welfare of both today’s and tomorrow’s pensioners and this response is based on the views and experiences of our members.
We wish to submit views to the Fire Safety Unit for the consultation for the Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans consultation. Our response has been compiled by our Housing Party as well as our Information Officer and will concentrate on the experiences and concerns of our members who are, by definition, in the older age range.
Our response to your proposals.
Your Foreword
We propose.
We note the recommendations of the report of the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee of 29 April 2021 over unsafe buildings. When they recommended the Government establishes a comprehensive Building Safety Fund to cover the costs of all remediation works and to move away from the current height-based approach irrespective of tenure including the provisions of these funds for social housing providers.
We agree with these recommendations and urge the Government to adopt them. it was not the owners of these properties who were to blame for these unsafe buildings.
It was wrong in the first place for these materials to have been included by the architects and construction companies. It was politicians who together with construction companies who were involved in the watering down of the health and safety and fire regulations that had created the Grenfell fire.
They allowed for the continuation of so many unsafe construction materials to be used, there huge cuts towards the safety inspections carried out by the health and safety executive and by the fire authorities enable a higher risk of fires to happen.
Executive Summary
Reference you comment:
The Act received Royal Assent in May 2021 and will be commenced in the coming months.
We propose.
This statement is too vague, and the Act must allow for an extended period of consultation. The Act should then commence by 31 September 2021. It should be noted it is now over 4 years since the Grenfell tragedy”.
Proposal 1:
We propose require the Responsible Person to prepare a PEEP for every resident in a high-rise residential building who self-identifies to them as unable to self-evacuate (subject to the resident’s voluntary self-identification) and to do so in consultation with them.
Our response:
While we agree on the need for PEEPS. We do not agree this should base on resident’s ability to be able to self-identify whether they can or cannot do so.
This task should be led by the responsible person involving the resident and, when requested a mutually agreed competent safety person. Our Fire and Rescue Services should monitor to ensure that PEEPs are being properly carried out. PEEPS must apply to all residents irrespective of their circumstances.
Responsible Person has got to be articulate, have integrity and be impartial to cost of preparing PEEPs for those who need it. Training when requested must be made available to residents so they are able to understand how they are affected by PEEPS.
Proposal 2:
We propose to provide a PEEP template (Annex A) to assist the Responsible Person and the residents in completing the PEEP, and to support consistency at a national level.
Our response:
We agree with this proposal. Good idea. Difficult to achieve.
Proposal 3:
We propose to require the Responsible Person to complete and keep up to date information about residents in their building who would have difficulty self-evacuating in the event of a fire (and who have voluntarily self-identified as such), and to place it in an information box on the premises to assist effective evacuation during a rescue by the Fire and Rescue Service.
Our response:
Good idea but Page 8 1st para last line of your paper states ‘We do not propose that for a PEEP to be effective that reliance is placed upon the intervention of the Fire and Rescue Service’. You cannot have it both ways! Each individual resident must be supplied with a copy of the PEEP evaluation.
The responsible person will organise and offer each resident a regular dry run exercise of how a PEEP should work and make any necessary adjustments those involve feel is required will be made.
Proposal 4:
We propose, to assist the Responsible Person and support consistency at a national level, to provide a template to capture the key information to be provided in the information box (Annex B)
Our response:
While we agree with your proposal. Further consideration needs to be given as to: Secure placement of the information box? How access to it will be controlled? How will the Responsible Person liaise with Fire and Rescue Service to keep this information up to date?
Question 5:
To what extent do you agree with proposal: We propose to require the Responsible Person to prepare a for every resident who self-identifies to them as unable to self-evacuate (subject to the resident’s voluntary self-identification) and to do so in consultation with them?
Strongly agree