THE most dangerous place to live, in terms of being likely to die in a fire, is a house divided into flats or bedsits, or a shared house, what’s known as a house of multiple occupation (HMO).
The growth of such properties in Worcester was partially behind an effort by two city councillors to get the law changed and make it mandatory for sprinklers to be fitted in such properties.
Councillor Matthew Lamb proposed the motion at the Guildhall to get the city authority to write to the Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government, Bromsgrove MP Sajid Javid, to get the law changed.
The motion which was passed unanimously was seconded by Cllr Lamb’s fellow St John Labour councillor Richard Udall.
Cllr Lamb said: “You are most likely to die in a fire in an HMO- you are 19 times more likely to die in one than in another type of property.”
Cllr Lamb said that one of the objections that landlords raised was cost- but he said that it wasn’t prohibitively expensive to fit sprinklers.
He added: “HMOs generally have what’s called ‘passive’ fire protection – fire doors and smoke alarms and emergency lighting. But most deaths in fires take place in the room where it started, and passive protection doesn’t help with that. If a fire starts in one bedroom in an HMO, the passive measures might stop it spreading and allow people to evacuate, but it doesn’t help anyone in the room of origin of the fire.
“Sprinklers don’t cost any more than passive measures – and it’s a fact that nobody in the country has died in a fire where a properly installed sprinkler system is used.
"We looked at using planning laws to do this and make owners of HMOs install sprinklers, but it needs a change made by central government, either a change in the law or a decision by the Secretary of State."
