London Tube Fire Safety Threatened

London Underground (LU) union RMT is warning that fire safety in the Tube is facing a twin threat.

Changes imposed by LUL have relegated fire-safety to become an adjunct of general health and safety policy, done away with the existing fire inspection programme and even abolished the post of specialist fire-safety advisor, RMT says.

The Union's Safety Reps raised serious concerns about the proposals, yet LUL management have waved them to one side and once more imposed change, despite a promise to postpone implementation to allow for more talks.

The union has urged the Railways Inspectorate to intervene to get LUL to suspend the changes, and has renewed its call to ministers not to scrap regulations that impose minimum fire-safety standards on sub-surface railway stations throughout Britain.

In an internal email outlining his opposition to changes to LUL's fire-safety management regime, which were imposed at the end of February despite union protests, LUL fire engineer Martin Weller said:

"Overall, I have reluctantly concluded that I cannot support the proposals as presented. At a time when LU is facing the biggest change in fire legislation to hit the UK in 30 years, and when we have evidence that the extensive engineering works that we are currently undertaking are increasing fire risk, it would (in my opinion) be inadvisable in the extreme to reduce the breadth and depth of specialist Fire Safety Management expertise within COO. 
I know of no organisation in the UK of a similar size to us and even approaching our fire risk profile which does not retain this type of management expertise.  A few days (or even weeks) training for existing staff cannot replicate the experience and expertise currently resident in that Directorate. I would intuitively anticipate that the proposed alterations will increase costs, rather than decrease them, since overall efficiency is likely to decline."

"It is astonishing that in one breath LUL can tell the London Assembly about the massive problems it experienced in the wake of the July 7 bombings yet with the next insist on changes that even their own fire engineer opposed," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.

"The review that resulted in these changes was seriously flawed.
We have discovered that at least one pilot scheme for the new regime never actually took place - a fact that LUL calls a 'minor inaccuracy'.

"We have already asked HMRI to intervene, but it is all the more important now to ensure that the minimum fire-safety standards brought in after the King's Cross fire remain in place.

"For all sorts of reasons - not least the security situation - the fire risk on the London Underground has increased significantly, and now is not the time for LUL to weaken fire-safety management or for ministers to abolish minimum fire-safety standards," Bob Crow said.                                     

"These revelations underline the urgent need to retain the existing sub-surface station fire-safety regulations, and we will be seeking an urgent meeting with the minister," said RMT parliamentary group convenor John McDonnell MP.

"If necessary we will use parliamentary procedure to block the start of the inferior arrangements the government intends to introduce so that this matter can be fully debated in parliament."

But Tube managers have disputed union claims they have plans which will jeopardise fire safety at stations. The company said it had no plans to reduce station staff and was happy for its regulations to be inspected.

A spokesperson for LU said it had an excellent fire safety record and its "risk assessment based approach" was recommended by the government.

"We will be happy for Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate to look at our fire safety regulations," he added.

LU said it was abolishing a senior fire safety advising post, but said that would not have any effect on overall standards. No station staff jobs will go, it said. They believed the fire risk was decreasing, not increasing and added that it was putting more modern fire prevention systems in place at stations.

Source: BBS News. RMT.

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