The national fire safety Joint Inspection Team (JIT) is hosted by the Local Government Association (LGA), and funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
Why was the JIT set up?
The JIT was set up following the Grenfell fire tragedy to assist local authorities to take enforcement action against tall building owners with unsafe buildings.
Who are the JIT?
The JIT are a multidisciplinary team with fire engineers, building control surveyors and environmental health officers (EHOs). The team is supported by intelligence officers and external legal advisors.
What does the JIT do?
The JIT are invited by local authorities and inspects blocks using the Housing Act 2004 and associated powers of the local authority. The JIT provides specialist fire safety advice and assesses the fire hazard and advises the local authority via an extensive report and Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) risk assessment. Where there are serious problems, councils usually take enforcement action against landlords, using the evidence from the JIT. The JIT can provide advice on wording of Improvement Notices and assistance with any subsequent appeals to the first-tier tribunal.
The remit of the team has been widened to cover all combustible cladding, and to provide council staff with training to enhance their understanding of fire hazards. The objective of the JIT is to give trained council staff greater confidence in their ability to undertake their own inspections and enforcement action. Subject blocks must be over 11m, measured from the lowest outside ground level to the highest occupied floor (which may include any roof garden or mezzanine in a duplex flat if applicable). Priority will be given to blocks over 18m.
Knowledge Hub (KHub)
A library of standard letters has been created for use in Housing Act 2004 investigation and enforcement work. These can be found by joining our dedicated page on Knowledge hub (KHub). This includes a directory of standard phrases to describe building defects to facilitate enforcement action. On the KHub there is a guidance note and flowchart on how to tackle large numbers of potentially combustible clad residential blocks, which was developed through the London Councils Private Residential Blocks Group.
Only staff with a ‘.gov.uk’ email address or those working in the social housing sector will be allowed access to KHub. If you are interested, please apply for access to the High Rise Residential Building Safety group.
HHSRS worked examples
You can access a series of HHSRS worked examples of tall buildings through membership of the KHub. More will be added throughout the year. You should get at least weekly updates from the KHub as they are added.
Training courses
The teamprovide the following training courses currently:
Level one: The building surveyor first covers some of the basics of external wall systems, including the basics of tall building construction. The fire engineer then delivers an introduction to the principles of fire safety in tall buildings. A section is then delivered by the building surveyor on the building regulations and Approved Document B. Finally, the principal EHO delivers a section on pre-inspection documentation, a section on how to work in a multidisciplinary team and concludes with an HHSRS assessment and further enforcement.
Level two: The JIT continues to develop new training material in response to attendee feedback and developments within the fire safety regulatory framework. Recently this has included expanding group exercises to assess compliance and hazard levels, adding a section on who to serve enforcement notices on and when, and handling Right to Manage (RTM) companies.
Level two:HHSRS inspection of a real building. A JIT YouTube video and pre-course learning is provided, two weeks ahead of the training day. Attendees are tasked with completing their own HHSRS assessment prior to attending the course. During the online training (three hours), the JIT discusses how they scored it, the evidence available and any evidence still needed. The building is scored, and an explanation is given of how the score was reached. We then compare scores via an online application. The last part of the training the principal EHO goes through the composition of an Improvement Notice relating to the building. Attendees should plan to devote a full working day to their preparation for this course.
Please contact the team at [email protected] for an up-to-date description of its current training courses.
All JIT advice, inspections and training is free to public sector employees.
FAQs
The JIT attend as advisors to the council and must be accompanied by council staff as the authorised officers (the council staff must be duly authorised to undertake an inspection under the Housing Act 2004). The JIT will have up to six staff on site, and usually split into two groups of three during an inspection, so council staff are needed on inspections. Two council staff are usually sufficient.
The JIT have found that inspections run quicker and smoother with less rather than more attending. A landlord or responsible person (RP) representative should be available to provide the necessary access to restricted areas when required – a caretaker/block manager is usually sufficient - there is no need for any RP representatives to directly accompany the team on the inspection. The JIT encourage fire and rescue services (FRS) to attend a post inspection debrief meeting (where the JIT give the main findings and an indicative HHSRS assessment), rather than attend the inspection itself.
Leaseholders (and occupiers) are required to be notified by the council under a notice served under section 239 of the Housing Act 2004. The JIT usually inspect a representative sample of properties - normally this is between 5 and 10 per cent. If floorplans are seen beforehand, we will advise the council the flats we will wish visit. The JIT will want the council to facilitate those inspections, informing specific occupiers of the JIT’s intention to inspect.
The extent of consultation with leaseholders or leaseholder representatives is a matter for the council and its consultation strategy, however neither leaseholders nor leaseholder representatives should attend the JIT inspection party through a building.
We allow two full days on site: the duty holder should be asked for access 9am to 6pm, and if we finish early that’s fine. We cannot fit in a return to the site after the two days, so it’s best to allow for the full two days.
The council is the legal authority, so will need to serve all the formal notices, and arrange access. This usually involves section 235 letters to get information about the block which helps plan an inspection, serving section 239s, and liaising with the JIT over practical arrangements. Before the JIT attend site, each council needs to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the LGA, (the JIT’s employers).
Section 239 notice of intended entry needs to be served on all persons who are owners or occupiers in the building being assessed. For clarity and depending on the ownership structure in your building it should be served on the freeholder and leaseholders and occupiers where different to the leaseholders (rented). This can be quite resource intensive.
Information received from the RP by the council on serving of the section 235 notice. A list of essential and desired intelligence will be provided to the council by the JIT, and it will include floor plans and elevations, the latest fire strategy, the fire risk assessment, and any reports detailing the results of cladding investigations already undertaken by the RP.
Additional information may include that which is available internally from the council’s planning process (or Land Charges), or information held at Companies House.
Immediately after an inspection the designated council officers attend the post inspection debrief meeting where the JIT give observations, main findings and an indicative HHSRS assessment. Council officers (FRS reps) are free to ask questions and resolve any areas of concern. This takes place as soon as is practicable after the inspection, and at the convenience of host council staff. A summary email is sent to the council within 72 hours confirming the JIT’s initial assessment.
The JIT provide a full report on the inspection along with recommendations and the HHSRS assessment and justifications. The JIT aim to provide this report within three weeks of the inspection. It is anticipated that this will provide the council with the necessary information to directly inform the enforcement process.
Officers designated by the council will receive a copy of the report and the HHSRS assessment. A copy of the report will also be kept by the JIT for future reference and made available to the DLUHC via a shared site. The JIT will not make the report available to any other individual or organisation, unless the council asks us to.
In addition, the JIT will not disseminate to a third party any intelligence you provide to the JIT that the council receive from serving a S235 notice, nor other intelligence the council provides in support of the inspection or subsequent enforcement, for example correspondence between the JIT and the council.
There are no restrictions.
The JIT encourages the council to share the evidence about the block within the report with the FRS. The JIT advises that robust version control is in place to prevent unintended distribution to third parties.
If the council decide to share the report with the building owners/duty holders, the advice is to withhold the Recommendations Section, the JIT team names under Persons Present and the signatories at the end. We also advise withholding the whole of Appendix 1 – the HHSRS assessment, unless a case is appealed to the first-tier tribunal.
(The JIT have found that releasing the HHSRS assessment can distract from the main issues, as building owners focus on disputing the individual scores that appear under the relevant matters.)
The council will then be responsible for preparing and serving any subsequent enforcement notice. JIT advice, bespoke to each authority, is available from experienced JIT officers, both on the enforcement process and the composition of an enforcement notices.
Before undergoing and arranging works in default (WID), councils are advised to contact DLUHC who will consider funding applications for buildings that require WID on a case-by-case basis. Arranging works in default is likely to entail some degree of specialised advice and project management. So far, the JIT has not advised on a case that has required WID.
Our legal advice is that sign off as compliant with building regulations does not rule out action under Housing Act 2004. HHSRS is based on evidence of a hazard, and if there’s evidence of a fire safety hazard, a tribunal should support appropriate enforcement whether or not something was signed off by a building control professional.