Calls for tighter laws to protect heritage assets
A SAFETY expert has called for tighter laws forcing owners of heritage buildings to boost their protective measures after hundreds of fires in historic buildings in the last 12 months.
Speaking a year after the devastating fire at Notre Dame in Paris, specialist fire risk assessor Keith Atkinson has also called for more financial incentives for developers to renovate old buildings.
Mr Atkinson is co-author of the National Database of Fires in Heritage Buildings, which lists blazes reported by the media.
It shows more than 400 fires at historic buildings in the UK in the past year – including 36 in Yorkshire.
They include the huge blaze at the former Walkley Clogs mill in Mytholmroyd on August 1 last year. Damage to the mill, built in 1851, was so extreme that it had to be demolished.
At the height of the blaze 15 fire engines and 75 firefighters from across West Yorkshire and Lancashire were called to the scene. The cause of the blaze was not established.
While the mill was unoccupied, the database, which is not an exhaustive list, also records fires at occupied heritage buildings, such as that at the 19th century Greenwoods Mill in Halifax in May last year.
The blaze was thought to have begun in a gym in the building, which housed several businesses. Up to 45 firefighters tackled the fire at the mill, which had been in the Greenwood family for 140 years.
Other cases on the database include a fire at the empty Grade II listed Fearnville House in Leeds in September, and the former Providence Mill in
Leeds, now a Capita site, in October.
Mr Atkinson, who runs a consultancy business near Chester, said: “If it is a modern building that burns down, although disastrous for the owners and occupiers, hopefully it is insured and is easily rebuilt – but you cannot rebuild heritage.”
The best way for these precious assets to be protected, especially from arsonists, he said, was for them to be occupied and properly maintained.
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