Dear colleagues,

 

In the light of recent changes by North Wales Fire and Rescue Service to their response procedure, this e-mail will encourage and enable you to review your museum’s Emergency Plan and, if necessary, start a dialogue with the Fire Service. It only affects museums in the following areas: Gwynedd and Ynys Môn, Conwy and Denbighshire, Wrexham and Flintshire.

 

Earlier this year North Wales Fire and Rescue Service implemented a new response procedure for Automatic Fire Alarm systems. Whereas in the past, the fire service would attend every alarm raised automatically, under the new procedure only confirmed fires are attended to. This means that if you have an Automatic Fire Alarm system in the museum which is activated, you cannot rely on the fire service attending unless somebody calls 999 to alert the fire service, and confirms that there is an actual fire.

 

The fire service point out that “The purpose of a fire alarm is to alert the occupants of a building that that there is a fire so that they can evacuate the premises or take other pre-planned action to ensure everyone's safety.   The purpose of a fire alarm is not to call the fire and rescue service.” http://www.nwales-fireservice.org.uk/afa/frequently-asked-questions-afas.aspx

 

The Welsh Museums Federation has discussed this situation at a recent committee meeting. We consider that this new procedure poses a risk to museums and collections, which are not staffed during night times and therefore nobody available who could confirm a fire should an Automatic Fire Alarm system be activated. This may lead to a delay in responding to an actual fire at a museum, which puts important cultural objects at risk.

 

There was no consultation about this change of procedure; with the background of increasing funding strains, which affects the fire service as much as all other publicly funded services, and considering that apparently 96% of automatically activated fire alarms turn out to be false alarms, the fire service felt that they needed to direct their resources where they were needed most.

 

Unfortunately it is not possible for the Welsh Museum Federation to negotiate with the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service as the situation in each museum is different. However, the Federation can give support to each museum wanting to raise concerns with the fire service directly. In fact, the more museums start a dialogue with their local fire service the better.

 

In addition to the Federation, please feel free to raise any question about this situation amongst the Emergency Planning Network; if you are not already on the JISC mailing group please sign up for EPNW on https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EPNW.

 

If your museum is accredited you should have an Emergency Plan which identifies measures to be taken to protect and salvage the collection in the event of a fire (which is a requirement of the Museum Accreditation Scheme, please see Requirement 1.9 on page 30 http://gov.wales/docs/drah/publications/130218accreditationorganisationalhealthen.pdf). The fire service’s take on this is: “In non-domestic premises covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the employer, the owner or someone else who has control of the premises (the designated 'responsible person')  must ensure as far as is reasonably practicable that the premises are safe for its occupants in the event of a fire.  These arrangements would include the actions that would be taken if the AFA system was activated.” 

 

You may need to review your emergency plan if it currently relies on the fire service responding automatically on activation, as this is not going to happen any longer. The fire service will now only respond if somebody phones 999 to confirm there is a fire.

 

If you wanted to get in touch with the fire service to talk about this situation, please consider the following:

 

-              Check your current fire activation procedure.

-              Check how the fire service has been informed to date.

-              If you are a Local Authority museum: contact your Technical Services department to check whether your alarm system is monitored centrally by the Local Authority, or a third party provider, and how the fire service is being informed of an incident.

-              Review your emergency plan accordingly.

-              Contact the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service on their landline phone number: 01745 535 250 http://www.nwales-fireservice.org.uk/.

-              Enquire about the response procedure in the event of an alarm being raised automatically from your museum.

-              Inform the fire service that museums are regarded as “priority responses”, not simply for the safety of human staff/volunteers/visitors, but also due to their culturally important collections.

 

If you could report back on the fire service’s response the Federation would be really grateful, as this would enable us to compile further advice should this be necessary.

 

Best wishes

Christian

 

 

Committee Member, Federation of Museums and Art Galleries in Wales