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New Look Fine

High street retailer New Look has been fined £400,000 and ordered to pay £136,052 in costs after pleading guilty to two breaches of fire safety legislation, following a serious fire at its Oxford Street store in London.

Thirty five fire engines and around 150 firefighters attended the fire on 26 April 2007, when around 450 people form the store and surrounding premises were evacuated. The first call to the fire service did not come until an office worker in an adjacent building took action, and the delay meant that the fire had already broken through the second floor windows when firefighters arrived. Source: FSE

What went wrong:

No record of the appropriate procedures to be taken during a fire alarm - the fire alarm sounded but was reset

Insufficient staff training which led to a delayed evacuation of the premises

Lack of training also led to staff evacuating around 150 people along a route directly underneath the fire

The absence of an interface between the swipe card system and the fire alarm panel prevented deactivation of the security doors

Green emergency door release units were fitted on the wrong side of the basement doors

Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Councillor Brian Coleman, said: “Good business management includes taking responsibility for fire safety, knowing the law and acting on it. This conviction shows that large companies are not exempt from prosecution and that London Fire Brigade will take action when businesses do not take their fire safety responsibilities seriously. Failure to comply with the law can, as this case has shown, result in a substantial fine.”

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