The Grenfell Tower tragedy is a reminder that fire engineering is fundamentally about protecting lives. It made clear that the profession must be confident in its responsibilities and capabilities.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry exposed systemic failures in building safety, including fragmented responsibilities, inconsistent standards, and serious gaps in competence and ethical oversight. Fire engineering was identified as a high-risk profession with uneven education routes, variable skills and limited capacity, undermining confidence in the profession and placing vulnerable people at risk. These shortcomings highlight the need for a coherent, regulated profession capable of consistently protecting life in a complex built environment.
In response to the Inquiry’s recommendation that fire engineering be regulated, the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel was established in April 2025 to give expert advice to Government on the fire engineering profession.
The Fire Engineers Advisory Panel’s Authoritative Statement published in December 2025, outlines the knowledge and skills expected of competent fire engineers as well as high standards of professional accountability. The Statement underpins the Government’s intention to regulate both the title and function of fire engineers. It marks an important step toward strengthening standards in this safety-critical area, promoting ethical conduct, and helping to rebuild public trust.
Although the Statement does not define a detailed competency framework or regulatory standards, it intends to:
- present a clear and ambitious vision for the future of the regulated fire engineering profession and those who work in it
- provide guidance for potential regulatory bodies, educational institutions delivering accredited fire engineering qualifications, and other stakeholders in the fire safety sector
- encourage fire engineers to strengthen their own capabilities and ethical standards proactively, ahead of legal regulation
A call to action for fire engineering professionals, this Statement aligns closely with the principles set out in the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment for Higher-Risk Buildings (UK-SPEC HRB). This Standard builds on the core UK-SPEC framework by defining additional expectations for engineers working on higher-risk buildings, including enhanced competence, accountability, and professional judgment. The Authoritative Statement complements this framework by setting out expectations for professional fire engineering practice where failure would have the greatest impact.
As the UK body responsible for setting and raising standards for the engineering profession, the Engineering Council welcomes this development as an important step towards greater consistency, accountability, and professionalism in fire engineering.