Professor Vikki McCall and Pete Apps at CIH Scotland's Housing Festival

At this year’s CIH Scotland Housing Festival, the closing moments of the plenary brought into light the challenges the Scottish housing sector still faces on fire safety.

Peter Apps, author of the book Show Me the Bodies, forensically dissected the failures that led to Grenfell, the main one of which was that tenants were not listened to when raising concerns.

Joined by Professor Vikki McCall from the University of Stirling’s ISPA (Intersectional Stigma of Place-Based Ageing) project, presenting the new report Trapped by Safety: Fire Doors, Accessibility and Policy Tensions in Housing (co-authored with Prof. Kim McKee), the message they left the audience with was simple and uncomfortable: the housing sector cannot afford to be complacent about fire safety.

Trapped by safety?

Peter Apps noted that disabled people were more likely to die in the Grenfell Fire, with the ISPA project highlighting a further paradox: that fire doors now required by building regulations are, for many older and disabled residents, not a protection but a barrier. As one housing manager told the researchers plainly: “Fire trumps accessibility.” That hierarchy is built into how we assess risk, how we fund adaptations, and how we design homes.

And it is leaving people trapped as inconsistent guidance means we have no easy solutions, whilst the process of navigating adaptations can take months and even years.

What the Scottish sector can do about fire safety…

This year, the University of Stirling’s Housing Studies cohort visited the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service for a hands-on training session.

The SFRS Risk Recognition Awareness training covered the real-world risk factors that housing professionals encounter in their tenants’ homes every day: smoking, home oxygen use, airflow mattresses, electrical safety, hoarding, fuel poverty and the often-overlooked dangers of emollient creams and lithium-ion batteries.

It also highlighted the stark reality that certain groups, and particularly older people, are statistically more likely to die in a house fire, and that the people most at risk are often already known to other agencies.

But arguably the most important message was a practical one. Housing organisations across Scotland have a direct route to help keep their tenants safer and many aren’t using it to its full potential.

The HFSV Referral Route – what housing organisations can do right now

The Scottish Fire & Rescue Service offers free Home Fire Safety Visits (HFSVs) and social landlords can refer tenants directly as a partner organisation. They can also book in for hands on training at the training centre in Cambuslang and take teams there.

If your organisation is already a Partner of SFRS, you can make referrals directly on behalf of service users. If not, you can direct tenants to refer themselves here.

Scotland has a genuine opportunity to build something powerful here and a connected, proactive system linking housing organisations, health partners, and the fire service around the people most at risk.

We need action for the Scottish housing sector on fire safety

Peter Apps and the ISPA team showed what happens when fire safety governance fails and it showed, with devastating clarity, that the people who suffer most are disabled people, older people, and those whose voices were never heard in the design of the spaces they lived in.

The report calls urgently for a national multi-agency forum, clearer strategic guidance, shared practice exemplars, and residents’ voices placed at the centre of decisions that affect their daily lives. These recommendations deserve a serious response from the sector.

Would you like to know more? The University of Stirling’s Housing Studies course is a fully online, part-time postgraduate programme designed for housing professionals. Curious what it’s like? There’s a free taster session coming up on 6th May 2026 (10-11am): register here.

For more information on the course, visit here.

Contact: Professor Vikki McCall