Letter: It Must Be Hoped that the National Trust Is Paying More Attention to the Risk of Fire

Published on: 18 Mar, 2025
Updated on: 18 Mar, 2025

From: Nigel Searle

In response to: The National Trust Should Be Ashamed of Itself

I agree with the previous comments made by Martin Elliot and David Roberts. The fire investigation report states (section included in its entirety):

“d) Rapid Fire Spread
“It is believed that the rapid fire spread observed at this incident occurred when the fire quickly reached the lift shaft allowing the smoke and fire to rapidly spread to each floor of the building and into the roof space.

“It is believed the fire was able to spread in to the room above the distribution board cupboard due to a lack of fire compartmentation above the board.

“An electrical contractor’s report in 2010 noted a lack of fire stop/barrier to the ceiling recesses of the distribution board cupboard.

“This report did not recommend any remedial work regarding this issue

“Additional evidence of this comes from the fire alarm panel information.

“In addition to the lift shaft this building had horizontal ceiling voids in between each floor and many other hidden voids that accommodated unseen, rapid fire spread.”

The National Trust is responsible for managing and maintaining many old buildings which will, because of their design and the materials used in their construction, be more prone to fires than modern builds.

Over the last 50 years and prior to the fire at Clandon Park, there has been significant damage to some other very well known UK historic buildings (among others, Uppark and, although not NT properties, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court immediately come to mind (although unlike the fire at Clandon, were not caused by electrical faults). Extensive damage was also caused by fire being able to spread rapidly and without hindrance through shafts, roof spaces, ceiling voids and other similar recesses.

Bearing these aspects in mind, although the 2010 electrical contractor’s report cited in the investigation report “did not recommend any remedial work” regarding the “lack of fire stop/barrier to the ceiling recesses of the distribution board cupboard” it should, nevertheless, have flagged a problem. And the National Trust being, one would expect, more than aware of the dangers of rapid fire spread in old buildings considered some prompt basic, probably comparatively inexpensive, remedial action, such as modifying or rebuilding the distribution board’s cupboard at the very least.

However, it would seem that this point (if the report was reviewed and not just filed) the risks were either, at the least, overlooked or worse, ignored completely. It would be interesting to know whether the 2010 report, which as far as I’m aware is not publicly available, specifically stated that no remedial action was recommended or whether this was taken by the National Trust as being the case from a lack of such recommendations, but I doubt that this will ever be forthcoming.

It is only to be hoped that the National Trust is now paying as much attention, preferably much, much more, to this aspect of the management of historic buildings in its care as it is currently giving to “political correctness” and other “woke” matters.