It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Zeynep Guzelkasap, operations director at Acorn Safety Services.
As anticipated in the health and safety industry, 2025 saw a sharp focus on fire prevention and this doesn’t look likely to slow down any time soon.
In April, the UK Government called for a crackdown on Fire Risk Assessors and in a letter to industry stakeholders, the National Resilience and Fire Safety Unit confirmed it will legally introduce “mandatory competence requirements for fire risk assessors.”
Because of this, we had expected to see an announcement around fire risk assessors and competency by now, but as yet we’re still awaiting any news. If legislation is brought in during 2026, or further news on this is shared soon, we expect that the demand for fire prevention services will continue to grow exponentially.
We’ve already seen a significant increase in demand for fire door inspections following the amendments to Section 156 of the Building Safety Act to improve fire safety in all buildings regulated by the Fire Safety Order, which is likely to continue into the new year.
Other new and emerging statutory changes such as the requirement for a second staircase in buildings taller than 18 metres and a possible shift towards European standards should also be taken into account for fire prevention measures, as should awareness of the fire spread patterns of modern building materials like composite cladding.
