Government accused of fire safety complacency

The most important safety research carried out in the fire service for 50 years has been buried by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), says the FBU firefighters' union.

The union claims that lack of action at national level is putting the lives of firefighters and the public at risk, with key parts of the research being ignored.

The research, by the Buildings Disaster Advisory Group, was the first to measure the effect on the human body of fighting fires in a range of day-to-day scenarios and extreme conditions. It found that a mix of heavy workload and heat from fires leads to dangerously high levels of heat exhaustion in firefighters, and concluded that they can only fight fires for 13 to 16 minutes before unsafe body temperatures are reached.

FBU general secretary Andy Gilchrist accused the ODPM of "breathtaking complacency". He said: "The most important safety research in 50 years is being swept under the carpet because it shows we need more firefighters. They asked the questions and now they don't like the answers."

Instead of taking urgent action at national level, ODPM civil servants sent a circular to fire authorities out-lining the research "for information". They added that it did not require a response and was not relevant to the government's fire service policy.

But a video of the research trials leaked to the union contains footage of exhausted firefighters, with many of the tests being cut short on health and safety grounds.