Sergio,

I have been watching this thread since you first raised your question, I couldnt understand what it was that you were really asking.

The actual definition of the word Arson is "the crime of intentionally starting a fire in order to damage or destroy something".

So I do get the designer, consultants, installers and duty holder need to comply with all appropriate fire risk assessments with regards type and location of building etc

So are you really asking how a Duty Holder prevents any potential criminal from accessing or being on or near their property? 

So when does a loyal and long serving employee suddenly become an arsonest (Criminal)? When their job appraisal doesnt go the way they want, when they dont get a bonus, and with "Red Mist" in their eyes, deliberately set fire to something that gets out of control. So what would be your suggested "Legal Mandate" to prevent that?

GTB

I have to agree. Short of banning all living things from a building there is nothing much you can do to 100% prevent the potential events described.

After all, for example, if CCTV cameras did actually prevent crime, then no criminal activity would exist by now. Fact is, they only record crime rather than prevent it. Same goes for introducing ever more meaningless regulations - they merely provide more laws to break.

Tinkering with legal aspects merely provides a gratuitous living for for those despicables who love to make a crisis out of a drama.

whjohnson said:

After all, for example, if CCTV cameras did actually prevent crime, then no criminal activity would exist by now. Fact is, they only record crime rather than prevent it.

I am inclined to agree, but if you are a miscreant, which property will you burgle: the one with CCTV (Ring doorbell, etc.) or the one without?

The same goes for burglar alarms, which is what we were told when we bought our house 20-odd years ago.

All that said, I do not see how you can legislate, or make any rules against arson short of criminal sanctions.

This is just a discussion but it may help to start people having conversations about if their Fire Risk assessments IS suitable and sufficient,  Do they need more fire/heat/CO detection.  EG not many people have fire/heat detection in their loft that is interlinked.  However loft and roof fires are becoming more common place, some due to ESS and PV some not.  It would also be very beneficial if all the UK fire services used the same fire reporting system and they added more granular description for Electrical fires.  This would help to show if it was an appliance fire or a E-Bike scooter fire (other fire starters are available)

With Engineers/Designers/Installers having discussions we can make things better for everyone

So is your point that fire risk assessments may have underestimated the probability of fire, because they haven't considered arson?

I'm thinking back (as often happens with your posts) to when I was a school H&S Governor, we wouldn't have considered arson in our fire risk assessments, simply because we didn't care what the cause of fire was - we had to ensure that any fire from any cause did not result (as far as foreseeable) in injury or loss of life. If we were to suggest  installing more sensors due to the risk of arson that would suggest we didn't have enough in the first place?

But to be fair I can imagine more complex situations than ours where ALARP could arise, additional fire sensors could be seen in certain areas as unnecessary as no credible means of starting a fire had been identified, but if there is a significant risk of arson that could change that ALARP argument. However, that doesn't need any change in the law, it's already covered by HASAWA - if arson's a risk then the risk assessments must consider it. But it could influence guidance.

There's actually been a progressive fall in fire related fatalities in England since 1982:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-england-year-ending-march-2022/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-england-year-ending-march-2022

Of course there may still be more that we could do, but I'd suggest if anything was needed (and I can't offhand think of anything) it would be guidance rather than law.

As other posters have suggested above, mandating organisations to prevent arson is basically impractical - if someone wants to commit a criminal act they will find a way of doing it, and making the organisation who owns the building legally responsible in all cases if that happens would not be acceptable. No director / governor / trustee etc could accept that. ("As a school governor if anyone commits a criminal act on your premises you may be criminally liable for that act." "Here's my resignation then." (see P.S.)) But that's different to saying they must consider the risk of criminal activity and take all reasonably practicable steps to mitigate it, as above that's already covered in law. When (in the day job) I assess a risk assessment I will be looking to see that trespass / vandalism etc are in there, the likelihood and severity are considered, and all reasonably practicable safety measures have been implemented. However the practicability test is that those safety measures are proportional to the risk. As soon as you legislate measures you remove that proportionality test, which can lead to disproportionate spending to manage a trivial risk taking funds away from proportionate spending to manage a credible risk. Which is why (very sensibly) in the UK there are vastly fewer legally mandated H&S measures than people often think there are...

So if you wanted to look at anything here, I'd suggest looking at the existing guidance on prevention of arson and looking at any potential ways of improving that. It's much more powerful than it sounds, if an organisation fails to follow e.g. HSE or fire service guidance without a sound argument then it's going to be hard for them to argue that they have identified all reasonably foreseeable risks and taken all reasonably practicable precautions. 

P.S. There are cases where a director etc can be criminally liable for the criminal acts of (particularly) their staff, that's slightly different from what's being suggested here.

So is your point that fire risk assessments may have underestimated the probability of fire, because they haven't considered arson?

I'm thinking back (as often happens with your posts) to when I was a school H&S Governor, we wouldn't have considered arson in our fire risk assessments, simply because we didn't care what the cause of fire was - we had to ensure that any fire from any cause did not result (as far as foreseeable) in injury or loss of life. If we were to suggest  installing more sensors due to the risk of arson that would suggest we didn't have enough in the first place?

But to be fair I can imagine more complex situations than ours where ALARP could arise, additional fire sensors could be seen in certain areas as unnecessary as no credible means of starting a fire had been identified, but if there is a significant risk of arson that could change that ALARP argument. However, that doesn't need any change in the law, it's already covered by HASAWA - if arson's a risk then the risk assessments must consider it. But it could influence guidance.

There's actually been a progressive fall in fire related fatalities in England since 1982:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-england-year-ending-march-2022/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-england-year-ending-march-2022

Of course there may still be more that we could do, but I'd suggest if anything was needed (and I can't offhand think of anything) it would be guidance rather than law.

As other posters have suggested above, mandating organisations to prevent arson is basically impractical - if someone wants to commit a criminal act they will find a way of doing it, and making the organisation who owns the building legally responsible in all cases if that happens would not be acceptable. No director / governor / trustee etc could accept that. ("As a school governor if anyone commits a criminal act on your premises you may be criminally liable for that act." "Here's my resignation then." (see P.S.)) But that's different to saying they must consider the risk of criminal activity and take all reasonably practicable steps to mitigate it, as above that's already covered in law. When (in the day job) I assess a risk assessment I will be looking to see that trespass / vandalism etc are in there, the likelihood and severity are considered, and all reasonably practicable safety measures have been implemented. However the practicability test is that those safety measures are proportional to the risk. As soon as you legislate measures you remove that proportionality test, which can lead to disproportionate spending to manage a trivial risk taking funds away from proportionate spending to manage a credible risk. Which is why (very sensibly) in the UK there are vastly fewer legally mandated H&S measures than people often think there are...

So if you wanted to look at anything here, I'd suggest looking at the existing guidance on prevention of arson and looking at any potential ways of improving that. It's much more powerful than it sounds, if an organisation fails to follow e.g. HSE or fire service guidance without a sound argument then it's going to be hard for them to argue that they have identified all reasonably foreseeable risks and taken all reasonably practicable precautions. 

P.S. There are cases where a director etc can be criminally liable for the criminal acts of (particularly) their staff, that's slightly different from what's being suggested here.