After a decade of lobbying, the UK’s leading education insurer and risk manager, Zurich Municipal has welcomed new guidance launched today by Schools Minister Jim Knight on the installation of sprinkler systems in schools.
In its guidance, ‘Design for Fire Safety in Schools’, the Department for Children, Schools and Families states that all new schools will have sprinklers fitted as standard. Exceptions to this presumption will have to be justified by demonstrating that a school is low risk and the use of sprinklers will not be good value for money.
Zurich has been campaigning for this move in conjunction with the Chief Fire Officers Association, the Fire Protection Association and other industry bodies. Their representatives have been involved with the two DCSF working groups looking at the risk assessment tool and the cost benefit analysis. In addition, Zurich has been working with educational advisors to educate young people in the dangers and consequences of arson. It also played a key role in generating the early day motion tabled by John Penrose MP earlier this year which was signed by over 100 MPs.
Currently around 2,000 schools in the UK are damaged by fire every year, of which 75% are believed to have been caused by arson. Sprinklers are 99% effective in controlling fires, so over the next 10-15 years as more schools are rebuilt or substantially refurbished we should see a significant reduction in the number and extent of school fires.
Larry Stokes, Underwriting Manager at Zurich Municipal and Chair of the Arson Prevention Bureau’s Schools Working Group said: ‘We wholeheartedly welcome this move which we believe will significantly reduce the cost and ensuing disruption of fires in schools, ensuring that students will be safer and better protected than ever before.
‘It may be some time until the majority of schools are fitted with sprinklers, so for its part Zurich will be working with other stakeholders to tackle the grass root problem of school fire by educating school-aged children about the dangers of deliberate fire setting.
‘With new Academies springing up across the country, and every school being rebuilt or refurbished under Building Schools for the Future programme, this is the ideal time to start fitting schools with sprinklers. In recognition of the difference that a sprinkler system can make, Zurich will be supporting all new schools and Academies fitted with sprinklers by offering significant reductions on their fire insurance premiums.’
Figures released earlier this year by Zurich Municipal show that school fires cost the UK an estimated £74 million in 2006: an increase of £7 million since 2005. In the USA, where there are five times as many schools and where sprinkler systems are widespread, fire costs totalled just £50 million. Currently in the UK only one per cent of schools is fitted with a sprinkler system.
