Shropshire hospital chiefs working on longstanding fire enforcement issues
Chiefs at a Shropshire hospital say they are taking the ‘last two per cent’ of actions called for by the county’s fire service to lift an enforcement notice.
The enforcement notice was slapped on parts of the old ward block at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital earlier this year and relates to general fire precautions which leaders say are ‘not a patient safety issue’.
A board meeting of The Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH) heard that the Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service lifted a previous notice in May this year after finding the “vast majority of breaches” were rectified.
Those breaches, now rectified, had included a lack of staff training and paperwork issues.
But there were ‘residual areas of non-compliance’ which were scooped up in a new enforcement notice which has a deadline of July 31, 2025.
The trust board was told that the fire service had ‘praised’ it for the work carried out on staff training and policy issues.
These unresolved issues are related to the age of the ward block and new fire regulations intended to stop the potential of fire and smoke spreading.
Rosi Edwards, who chairs the SaTH Performance Assurance Committee, told the trust board meeting on Thursday (July 10): “We will have to do this, there is no getting out of it, it’s a fire issue.”
A spokesperson for the trust said after the meeting that it would have been difficult to deal with the issue sooner because wards full of patients would have to be moved out to allow the work to proceed.
But the meeting was told that “new methods of surveying using 360-degree cameras have enabled SaTH to get the survey done without decanting patients”.
Ines Robotham, assistant chief executive, said: “We have done 98 per cent of the survey work.
“We haven’t found anything that we need a full ward decamp and it is better than we expected.”
Andrew Morgan, who chairs the SaTH board, said: “We will keep on the right side of the fire and rescue service.”
The notice calls for a plan of action to rectify any failings which “must be reviewed by, and in consultation with Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service by July 31, 2025”.
A spokesperson for the trust said it is working through the ‘last two per cent' of actions and added: “This is not a patient safety issue.”
