Tall building fire strategy at planning committee

When a tall building fire strategy reaches committee, the useful preparation is not more technical detail. It is a clear account of what members are entitled to weigh and what belongs to a later stage of an entirely different regime. Planning Gateway One brings fire safety into the planning decision, but it brings a defined slice of it, and a committee that strays beyond that slice produces a decision that is hard to defend and conditions that cannot lawfully be imposed.

So the officer's report and the applicant's material both have to draw that boundary explicitly, before the meeting rather than during it.

What members can and cannot consider

Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires a Fire Statement to accompany an application for relevant development involving a relevant building, and makes the Health and Safety Executive, as the building safety regulator, a statutory consultee.

The matters that are properly before the committee are the ones that are land use questions:

• Site layout and the space around the building, including whether fire appliances can reach the building and stand where they need to.
• Access routes, their width, their gradient, their surfacing and whether they can carry an appliance.
• Water supplies for firefighting, including hydrant provision and its location.
• The position of the building relative to boundaries and to neighbouring buildings.
• The general principles of the evacuation strategy where they affect the massing, the core arrangement or the number of stair cores, because those are design matters visible on the drawings.
• Whether the site can accommodate the scheme at all given the above.

The matters that are not before the committee are the ones the building control regime decides at the later gateways: the specification of materials and cladding systems, compartmentation details, detection and alarm design, sprinkler design, smoke control calculations, and the certification of products. Those are determined under the Building Safety Act 2022 framework, and a planning committee has no power to approve or refuse them.

The distinction is not a technicality. A refusal on grounds that are reserved to building control is vulnerable on appeal, and a condition duplicating the building regulations fails the necessity test in national policy on conditions.

How the regulator's response is reported

Report it in full, verbatim, as an appendix. Do not paraphrase it in the body of the report and leave the original out.

Three reasons. The response is often carefully worded, distinguishing matters it comments on from matters it does not, and a paraphrase loses that. Members and objectors will ask for it and the meeting stalls if it is not there. And where the regulator has raised a point the applicant has answered, the sequence of documents is the evidence that it was answered.

Be precise about what the response is. The regulator advises the local planning authority on fire safety matters relevant to the planning decision. It does not approve the building, it does not sign off the fire strategy, and a response that raises no comment is not an endorsement of the design. Officers who describe it as approval create an expectation that later gateways will disappoint.

Where the response is substantive and the applicant has amended the scheme, set out the original point, the change made, and whether the regulator was re-consulted.

Common questions and how to answer them

Committees ask the same things, and preparing the answers saves the meeting.

Whether the building will have one staircase or two. Government policy moved on this and the requirement for new residential buildings above 18 metres has been brought into the building regulations guidance with transitional arrangements, so check the current position and the transitional dates before the meeting and state them plainly. Where the scheme provides a second staircase, say so and show it on the plan, because it is a visible planning matter that affects the core and the floor plate.

Whether sprinklers will be fitted. Usually a building regulations matter, so the honest answer names the regime and says what the applicant has committed to.

Whether the cladding is safe. The answer is that materials are specified and controlled at the later gateways, and that the planning permission does not authorise a cladding system.

What happens in an evacuation. The strategy in principle is a fair question where it affects layout. The detailed procedure, including arrangements for residents who cannot use stairs, is a matter for the building's later duty holders under the building safety regime.

Whether the fire service supports it. The fire and rescue service is consulted on building regulations applications and its position on access and water supplies is relevant here, so obtain it and report it.

Conditions that are within planning's remit

Keep the list short and enforceable:

1. Development to be carried out in accordance with the approved plans, which is what secures the layout, the access routes and the stand positions.
2. Provision of fire hydrants, or a contribution towards them, before occupation, where the water undertaker or fire service has identified a need.
3. Details of the surfacing and construction of the fire appliance access route, where the approved plans do not already fix it.
4. Retention of the access and standing areas free of obstruction, where a management arrangement is needed to secure it.
5. Where the Fire Statement itself is relied on, a condition requiring the development to accord with the principles set out in it, drafted so that it does not purport to approve technical detail.

Resist a condition requiring compliance with the building regulations, or requiring approval of a full fire strategy by the planning authority. Both duplicate another regime and neither is enforceable in any useful way. The technical document itself, whether a Fire Statement or a fuller Fire Safety Strategy, must be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence, and an AI-drafted document is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for them.

Matters properly left to later gateways

Set this out in the report as a short list, so that members can see the questions will be asked by somebody.

Gateway Two applies before building work starts, with the regulator assessing the design against the building regulations. Gateway Three applies before occupation, with a completion certificate required. Between them sit the duty holder obligations, the golden thread of information, and the mandatory occurrence reporting duties.

Saying this in the committee report does two useful things. It reassures members that approving the planning application is not the last check. And it makes clear that refusing on a reserved matter would not bring that check forward.

Resident concerns and how to address them

Objections from existing residents in the area, and from residents of nearby tall buildings, are often about fire in general rather than about this application. They deserve a respectful answer rather than a jurisdictional brush-off.

The answer has three parts. What this decision controls, which is the layout, the access and the water supply. What the later gateways control, with a plain description of when they happen. And what the applicant has committed to on the matters that are visible now, such as the number of stair cores and the appliance access arrangement.

Where the scheme involves adding storeys to an occupied building, the concerns are sharper and more legitimate, because existing residents live with the works. The evidence expected in that situation is set out in our note on airspace development above flats.

Preparing the officer for the meeting

A short briefing note from the applicant's team, agreed with the case officer, is worth more than a longer technical appendix. It should contain the boundary between planning and building control in a paragraph, the regulator's response and the applicant's answer to each point, the plan extract showing appliance access and stand positions, the hydrant position, the number of stair cores, and a list of the questions likely to be asked with a one-line answer to each.

One honest uncertainty. The interface between planning and the building safety regime is still settling in practice, and authorities differ in how much technical material they ask for at application stage. Where the scheme is unusual, ask the case officer early what level of detail the authority expects, and where basement or below-ground accommodation is involved, the egress questions set out in our note on safe egress from habitable basement rooms come up in the same conversation.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which fire and structural reports your scheme is likely to need.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.