Meeting of the Parliament 30 October 2019
Thank you.
I do not want to pre-empt the public inquiry, but the committee’s report did look forward and said that the decision on future management of the building, in relation to its purpose and how it is rebuilt, should not be for the Glasgow School of Art’s management to take alone. There should be wider consultation not just with the local community but across all layers of government in Scotland. The Glasgow School of Art might be an independent institution, but it is in receipt of substantial public funds, so it is absolutely right that we scrutinise management’s decisions on how those funds are spent.
Historic buildings such as the Mackintosh are awarded their category A listed status because they can be characterised as sites of unique historical or architectural interest. Often, it is those inimitable features that make such buildings so susceptible to the risks that are posed by fire. Although those risks can never be entirely mitigated, the committee sought to understand the GSA’s approach to the management of risk and to ascertain whether, having identified specific risks to the Mackintosh building, it had taken proportionate measures to adequately manage those risks.
When it considered the GSA’s custodianship of the building, what the committee found most concerning was not just the art school’s understanding of the potential risks that fire posed to the building, but the length of time that it had known about those risks and the steps that it had taken to mitigate them.
The fire safety expert Stewart Kidd raised concerns, in writing, about the risks that were posed by fire as far back as the mid-1990s, when he visited the building with Historic Scotland. In his written evidence to the committee, he described parts of the building as working
“like a very effective chimney”.
That is just one of the many concerns that were raised by the fire safety experts and GSA alumni who gave evidence to the committee.
It was a source of great concern that the voids that were identified by Stewart Kidd back in the 1990s were found by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to be the cause of the rapid spread of fire in 2014—it identified that the fact that panels had been left off those voids allowed the fire to spread as it would have done through a chimney. We were also told in evidence by the GSA’s architects that those voids had still not been blocked last year, during the restoration.
In 2006, the Glasgow School of Art commissioned Buro Happold to produce a fire protection strategy to review what it called feasible options
“for the long-term protection of the occupants, property and contents”
of the Mackintosh building. In its report, Buro Happold emphasised the risk of fire to the Mackintosh building and stated that, because of the historic nature and value of the property and many of its contents, fire posed a great threat.
Despite the reassurances that the GSA provided about the building being compliant with the relevant fire safety standards, the committee took the view that, given the building’s significance, the way in which it was used by students and the risks that had been clearly identified by Buro Happold and others, the GSA appeared not to have addressed specifically the heightened risk of fire to the Mackintosh building.
The GSA has argued that its decision to install a mist suppression system following the outcome of a property protection study that was carried out in 2008 demonstrated its commitment to the building’s safety, but despite those good intentions, such a system had not been installed by the time of the 2014 fire. Why did it take so long to install a mist suppression system, which might well have prevented the spread of the first fire in 2014? It should be said that if there had not been a fire in 2014, the building would not have been destroyed in 2018.
In response to questions from the committee on the issue, the GSA stated that the timescale for the implementation of a mist suppression system was attributable to two key factors—namely, the need to obtain funding and the discovery of asbestos in the Mackintosh building. According to the GSA, once it had obtained approval in principle to install a suppression system, it had to secure funding. Following unsuccessful claims to Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the GSA initiated its own fundraising exercise. Fire safety experts described the GSA’s use of fundraising to fund such a safety-critical system as unusual, and the committee questioned whether more could have been done, given the well-documented risks that existed.
When the committee questioned why funds to support the installation of a mist suppression system could not have been secured from bodies such as Historic Environment Scotland, Dr Muriel Gray explained that the installation of such a system was deemed an enhancement, so funds could not be secured through means other than fundraising. The committee found it remarkable that, having identified the risks to one of Scotland’s most iconic buildings, the art school was forced to fundraise for funds to protect the building appropriately. Furthermore, the committee remains concerned that sufficient steps were not taken in the interim to mitigate the risks and ensure the building’s safety.
Therefore, the committee recommended that the Scottish Government should undertake an assessment of whether the funding models that are currently available to higher education institutions to protect historic assets such as the Mackintosh building are adequate, and that the Scottish Government, through its agencies, should review the adequacy of powers to compel owners to put in place enhanced fire safety measures to protect buildings of national significance.
The committee was therefore pleased that, following the publication of the report, the cabinet secretary instructed officials to review the adequacy of powers to compel owners to put in place enhanced fire safety measures in the context of A listed buildings.
One area of particular concern raised by the conservation architect Dawson Stelfox was the need to better protect historic buildings such as the Mackintosh during their restoration. He said:
“A focus on the importance of the historic building asset in a fire risk assessment is currently lacking in the guidance and legislation.”
He went on:
“we need to think about how we use fire safety measures and audits to protect historic fabric in the long term. That is not a requirement at the moment”.
When the committee asked a witness from Historic Environment Scotland about that perceived gap in the statutory position with regard to the protection of assets during the construction, they acknowledged that
“Increasingly, there is an understanding with the historic environment, and with collections associated with buildings such as museums, that there is a need to protect those as assets in their own right.”—[Official Report, Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee, 17 January 2019; c 7, 32.]
Accordingly, the committee recommended that the Scottish Government review, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, the legislation concerning safety in historic buildings during the construction phase of projects in order to identify any additional legislative measures that could be put in place to protect those buildings.
The committee’s report expresses considerable concern about the treatment of the local community by the GSA after both fires. Our report recommended that more community engagement should take place. As I said to Mr Tomkins, decisions on the rebuild and the future use of the building should not be for the GSA management alone.
Our report does not say too much about the 2018 fire, because the report on that from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has not yet been published. However, I put on record the committee’s concern that we did not see the fire plan and were told that the SFRS had signed it off, only for the SFRS to then write to us to deny that. We were also concerned about the contractor’s inability to tell us whether the fire alarm was operational on the night of the fire and about the amount of activity taking place in the Mackintosh building, particularly social activities, during the restoration. However, we will have to wait to see the SFRS’s report before we draw any conclusions from any of that.
The committee welcomes some of the progress that the Scottish Government has made to address the issues that were identified in the committee’s report. I hope that that will lead to greater protections for Scotland’s most iconic buildings generally. Although we await the results of the SFRS report into the 2018 fire, the committee believes strongly that it will provide us with only part of the story. The process is not about attributing blame; it is about learning lessons so that, as a country, we ensure that our built heritage can be enjoyed by future generations. The committee and I therefore hope that the Scottish Government will commit to holding a full public inquiry following the publication of the SFRS report.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations in the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee’s 2nd Report 2019 (Session 5), The Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Building: The loss of a national treasure (SP Paper 487).