I came across this during the week. Hotel staff at Premier Inn, had no idea how to get guest with mobility issues out during a fire emergency.  Is this the norm in UK? Is it over the top to suggest people are sacked?

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/premier-inn-disabled-woman-hotel-guest-fire-alarm-wheelchair-a9204701.html?fbclid=IwAR2wU2UDmnTIJZmbLSRSWe-EH6luitS87QhB5QWBSwAKExP74ChwzEDppy4

Looking forward to various views

Seamus

Edited by user 23 November 2019 09:18:33(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Firstly, of course it is wrong and outrageous that the guest was not included in the evacuation. Premier Inn should know better. Is it shocking? Er, no, not at all.

The low cost hotels keep their fees down by employing staff (at all levels) at the lowest pay rates and will only provide the most basic of training. Its the same in retail. Lets hope changes are made 

However some questions:

• Why was she waiting an hour? If during a fire something goes badly wrong with the emergency plan (like here) the fire service will evacuate the person and ask serious questions later
• If the fire service didn't attend, I hope this lady informed them (as well as Twitter and the media) as they definately would act 
• It seems that this is not the first evacuation as the member of staff suggested it was smoking in a room. If so, why dont they use heat detection in hotel bedrooms. It would prevent false alarm like this

Premier Inn need to up their game. The Eastbourne Hotel fire yesterday shows the speed fires can spread and Premier Inn experienced this is July  which showed modern buildings burn as easily as well as the old Victorian seaside ones.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-49028337

I'm from Eastbourne and it was so sad to see one of our beautiful hotels go up in flames at the weekend.  Everyone was safe and evacuated quickly from what was, actually, an enormous hotel.  If they can manage it with an hotel built in 1851, there's no excuse with a modern building.

In a previous life I travelled the UK extensively and thanks to the travel policy often found myself booked in with one of the several budget chains.

Often within the hotel facility there would be a single member of reception staff out of office hours.

Shift changeover typically seemed to occur at the busiest arrival period so missing simple information would not be an impossibility.

Another chain even had this person out and about doing room preparation to save on hiring cleaners.

This would likely have been an entirely different story if it weren't a London hotel.

Its not just Hotels. I've had several conversations recently with Architects, Hostel managers and others about the fact that they can't just leave people in refuges for the fire service to rescue. One senior manager asked me when the regulations had changed: 2005 I said....

John

The hotel should have provided their staff with adequate training. There are plenty of different types of evacuation chairs and such devices on the maket. No excuse for this. I f a guest is disabled it would be wise to discuss with them the level of their disability in a polite manner when assessing their evacuation in an emergency. With employees we provide a PEEP (Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan) for employees with disabilities.

You can't train or expect all hotel staff to use evacuation equipment - at one stay the receptionist was themself wheel chair bound and the only person on duty overnight.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

You can't train or expect all hotel staff to use evacuation equipment - at one stay the receptionist was themself wheel chair bound and the only person on duty overnight.

So what was the evacaution plan?

Article 15 of the Fire Safety Order- Procedures for serious and imminent danger and for danger areas,

(1) The responsible person must:

1. establish and, where necessary, give effect to appropriate procedures, including safety drills, to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger to relevant persons and
2. nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to implement those procedures in so far as they relate to the evacuation of relevant persons from the premises;

So one person with no support is a” a sufficient number of competent persons”

 Hmm!!  

It's the usual documented thought and the practical deed failing to align, but a good question for the budget chains - how can a single night receptionist be a "sufficient number"?

Edited by user 28 November 2019 13:24:32(UTC)  | Reason: FFS

I think that this is based on saying that a fire is extremely unlikely to break out and so we need not worry about things like evacuations. So that’s ok then BUT  when you look at the  fire prevention efforts ie fire doors that work, sprinkler system, use of fire resistant materials in construction and stopping the accumulation of flammable rubbish etc the attitude becomes one of “ we have a signed off evacuation procedure and so we don’t need to worry too much about fire prevention!”

Many of these hotels are fairly new - under 20 years old and in my opinion are symptomatic of the failed two phased approach buildings are designed, built and operated under.

The old Fire Precautions Act almost entirely considered the building, its layout, its size and matters such as travel distances etc. OK there were different guides based on the use of the building, but no consideration of the way the building will be operated or the actual true risks that will be present.

This led to the Fire Safety Order and its real time risk based approach which we use now. This piece of legislation is under scrutiny now after a number of high profile fires, but whatever happens, I hope a true risk based approach will remain.

So consider this, you want to build an eight story budget hotel. The clue is in the name, you want to build it cheaply to keep costs down. You will ask the architect “What do I need to do to get this built?” He or she will design it to just comply with Approved Doc B and use British standard fire alarms, emergency lighting etc. There will be no actual risk assessment of how the building will be operated, in the same manner as a FRA would after the hotel is open - and thereby a gap is born.

You provide the minimum size refuges and  they are equipped with comms equipment to reception. That will get you a big tick in the box re your local building control. But there is no assessment made into will the Hotels operating model support this - especially when it comes to staffing

So the hotel opens, a General Manager is appointed and given strict financial targets to achieve. He or she looks at staffing and immediately decides to meet the targets and keep their job, only one receptionist will be on duty after 23:30 hours. That will reduce costs so job done! But of course that poor soul has to respond to a fire alarm, call the fire service, answer the refuge calls, AND assist with an evac chair??????

It is of course absolute nonsense and this is happening across many sectors including and most dangerously, the health and social care sector.

Evacuation/firefighting lifts are the answer in new builds - even on buildings below 18m where the design and use requires it. Or where two lifts or more lifts are installed, maybe a relaxation of the standards could be made subject to sufficient fire resisting separation between them and a system where fire detection system activating in the vicinity isolated the nearby lift and illuminates a sign informing users to use an alternative lift.

The use of heat detection in hotel bedrooms is permitted and should be rolled out more often to prevent false activations and unnecessary evacuations 

Evac chairs have their uses in existing and of course older premises in particular. But for goodness sake, we are living in the 21st century and its time to consider the use of technology in evacuating some of our most vulnerable in society.  Widespread use of evac lifts are the way forward for new flats and commercial buildings - of even even 2 floors. Being bumped down umpteen floors in an evac chair by - whoever turns up - is a process that like using ducking stools a method to identify witches, should be confined to history books 

Smoke detectors are used to get the earliest possible signal that something is potentially wrong. Heat detectors only activate once the sensor detects 60 degrees of heat. I would not like to be in a room sleeping where a fire can reach this temprature at dectector height before an alarm activates. Heat detectors are suitable for many places where heat or steam in the environment as an issue.

As for the use of evaquation chairs- I train staff in these and if trained correctly transport in one is comfortable and there is no weight restriction of 8 stone. That said I would not like to have to transport someone of 20 stone for any distance!!!

I have a client who has installed a mixture of evac chairs and sledges. The chair is for a specific person who is in excess of 20 stone, but they haven't tested the chair with him or conducted a test evac with him due to hurting his feelings or making him uncomfortable with the process. I've tried to tell them that they need to practice or it could unravel if there was a real fire