Fire Safety Matters Podcast - Episode 49

**Brian Sims** (0:16)
Welcome to episode 49 of the Fire Safety Matters Podcast, where we bring you the latest news, views and opinion from across the UK's dedicated fire industry. My name is Brian Sims and I'm the editor of Fire Safety Matters Magazine. We're delighted that this podcast is sponsored by the Fire Safety Event, which runs at the NEC in Birmingham from the 27th to the 29th of April, 2027 Fire Safety Matters is once again serving as the lead media partner for the exhibition. To register for the show, visit www.firesafetyevent.com.
As always, I'm joined on the Fire Safety Matters Podcast by my colleague Mark Sennett, the CEO at Western Business Media and also the founder of Fire Safety Matters Magazine. Hi Mark, how's things with you?

**Mark Sennett** (0:50)
All good, Brian. It's actually nice to be sat next to you for a change doing this podcast. We very rarely get the opportunity to actually do this. We do it via teams and recordings. We're actually sat next to each other for a change. We are in Spain, as it happens, working out here, which gives us a rare chance to actually be together. I know a lot of you listening to this know that I also host the Health and Safety Matters Podcast, our sister publication that we own. We talk a lot about mental health on that podcast and working conditions. We talk about effectively the issues of being remote workers. It's great, the flexibility, but at the same time, there is that worry of isolation.
Every year, Brian and I make sure that we spend about three or four days together.
This is Brian, this is Scotland, for those of you that don't know, and obviously, I'm based in glorious Oxfordshire with the world's greatest slash most average football team.
So, it's great for us to come to get it outside of just work events. And we always say, oh, we do a podcast together. So actually, this should, anyone complaining about microphones, I think this should actually work relatively well, because we're both on the same microphone. Or it's gonna work relatively badly, because we're on the same microphone. But yeah, it's been a really, really busy few weeks. As always, we're gonna start with the news. But before we do that, I always wanna remind you that you don't have to wait for this podcast to come out. You can see all the latest news, prosecutions, products and services, industry analysis. For the UK fire sector, you can go to our website, which is fsmatters.com. You can't remember that. Throw in to a search engine, Fire Safety Matters, or follow us on X, follow us on LinkedIn, whatever it is that you do. But going on to the website, you can see all of our back issues of our magazine for free. You can sign up to get print or digital copies of the magazine for free. You can also get our weekly e-newsletter, along with 54,000 others of your peers. You can also see all of our upcoming CPD accredited webinars. I'd also encourage you to sign up to our on-demand webinar platform, which is ignitecpd.com.
Now, that has over 400 health and safety and fire safety webinars, including all of the recordings from previous Fire Safety Matters Live conferences. If you didn't make them, you can then watch them on demand. Equally, if you did make them and watch them again, you can do that. It only costs 299 pounds per year to do it. So, it's about 25 pounds a month. And you get a CPD certificate that's personalized for every single webinar that you watch. And we uniquely and safely store it for you so you can download it at your own leisure. Anyway, we start with the news. And the way we do this, Brian and I pick a couple of news stories each. But weirdly, we've actually both came to the same conclusion of what news story we should start with on this episode of the podcast. So Brian, what have you got for us?

**Brian Sims** (3:37)
It's a major story Mark. Having served the Fire Industry Association in the role as CEO for just shy of 11 years now, Ian Moore OBE recently decided to step down due to a further occurrence of ill health. The board of directors at the FIA stands firmly behind Ian's decision to move to reassure the Trade Association's membership that, in the interim period, the team at headquarters under the guidance of Chair Martin Watson and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Edgerton-Lynch, is in a strong position to continue meeting their objectives and needs. Going forward, the board members will be looking at what Ian's decision means for the FIA from a structural perspective. The board and the leadership team will be working on this over the coming months, Mark.