Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Safety and Wellbeing Plan 2022

The tragic fire at Grenfell Tower highlighted the need for major improvements to the built environment. Making buildings safer for all our customers is core to our role and our vision. We believe that by working in partnership, we can help create a safer built environment, which will reduce the number of fires and help keep our customers safe.

Since Grenfell, we have developed a new approach to Building Safety, which has led to significant increases in the number of buildings we audit on an annual basis. Over the past few years, we have made a significant investment in our Building Safety teams, recruited more staff and are on course to meet the National Fire Chief Councils’ competency framework for Protection.

We have also introduced a new risk based inspection programme, which ensures the work of our fire risk inspection team is focussed on buildings which are more likely to have a fire.

As the fire safety regulator for Kent and Medway we are aiming to audit all high risk buildings by 2025. We will work with businesses to raise standards, ensure premises are well designed and work with partners to use technology which will make all our customers safer. Where we need to keep our customers safe, we will use our enforcement powers under the Fire Safety Order 2005, in a proportionate way.