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A loose law may have been the spark that lit the flame
BEHIND the devastating fire that gutted a part of Camden Market lies a trail of flawed government policies based on the growing trend to deregulate public services.
Once, a local authority and the Fire Service were able to compel owners of commercial premises by law to install fire safety equipment following inspection.
Admittedly, the Fire Service, often the victim of short-sighted central government economies, suffered from inadequate manning and, as a result, inspections of commercial premises could be very much hit-and-miss.
But, nonetheless, public bodies and private companies knew the last word lay with the Fire Service inspectors, and few would attempt to resist them.
Then, as the powers of public authorities began to wilt under first, Thatcherism, and then New Labour, the Fire Service was the next to fall victim.
That began when the New Labour wonks, in thrall to the philosophy that private is best, got to work on the Fire Service.
The result was the Fire Safety Act of 2005, with its built-in soft centre delegating responsibility of fire safety to the individual owners of premises.
The unforeseen consequences of such a badly drafted law may be felt for some time to come.
Fire Service inspectors continued to function, but they were now much more marginalised.
It is quite possible, of course, that even an empowered Fire Service, such as it was prior to the new Fire Service Act, may have, through oversight or human error, failed to force the individual traders at the Camden Market to protect themselves and customers with proper fire safety equipment.
But the tighter the regulations the less likely that that can happen.
Water down the law, loosen the old tight regulations, and the more likely you are to suffer the catastrophe that occurred on Saturday night.
If the fire had started an hour earlier, casualties among shoppers could have been on an horrendous scale.
Campaigners have been warning for years about crowd control, and the danger of fires.
Authorities, as usual, paid little heed.
There are some who go further and heretically argue that Camden as a borough gains little from the market. That, given sound planning, it could have been developed along the lines of the successful Upper Street in Islington – replete with a mixture of market, service shops (sadly lacking today), restaurants and large retail outlets.
Has that argument been completely lost?
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