FIRE SAFETY AND SCHOOL NOTICE BOARDS

That this House notes with concern that a significant proportion of notice boards installed in school classrooms do not comply with current fire standards; is alarmed that in many instances notice boards are installed from an imported product currently marketed as being suitable for the manufacture of firelighters; notes that according to the Home Office Incident Reporting System there were 682 school fires in 2017-18 in England and that 30 per cent of school fires occurred with children in the building; believes that in view of the Grenfell Tower tragedy it is imperative that fire sprinklers are installed in schools and that all internal wall linings meet fire standards; calls on the Government to ensure that in order to meet such fire standards notice boards are classified as wall linings; calls on fire and rescue authorities to liaise with local education authorities and other school management bodies to raise awareness of non-compliant flammable wall linings including noticeboards, acoustic panels and plywood which would add to the intensity of a school fire incident; and urges that all school notice boards are inspected to ensure that they are fire compliant and if found to be not compliant are replaced with notice boards that are fire safe to European BS EN 13501 class B standard.