The Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA) is delighted to announce that its Waste Wood Fire Prevention Plan Guide has been approved by the Environment Agency after nearly two years of development.
The document, which is the first sector-specific guide on Fire Prevention Plans (FPPs) to be produced, comes at the end of years of discussions and debates over the potential negative impact the EA’s FPPv3 guidance could have on the sector. It outlines the different fraction sizes of waste wood that may be stored and the differences in their storage requirements, as well as talking about seasonality challenges faced by the industry and how to explain these in an FPP.
Andy Hill, Chair of the WRA, said he was delighted wood recyclers finally had an EA approved guide which would help operators, both large and small to meet the measures outlined in the FPP Guidance, or to propose alternative measures if they need to move away from the standard guidance.
The WRA guide will lead them through a process and give them the best chance of getting approval for their FPP – a legal requirement for all sites storing combustible materials.
“For over a year now we have been working with the EA to develop this guide for our members,” said Andy. “More recently this culminated in collaborative working with fire specialist Peter Buckley who helped to move things forward considerably.
“However the background to this dates back much further than the past 12 months. We have been in discussion with the EA for over three years about the content of the actual FPP guidance itself and how a one-size-fits-all approach would not work for our sector.
“The past 12 months has seen some remarkable break-throughs and we believe that we now have a guide that can help wood recyclers make the FPP guidance work for our industry and the EA.”
The WRA’s Waste Wood FPP Guide will be published and officially launched at the trade association’s winter members’ meeting in December.
Julia Turner, Executive Director of the WRA, said: “We would like to thank everyone at the EA and our sector partners for helping us to get to this point. We are extremely proud to be the first trade body to launch a sector-specific guide for our members and hope this will mean many more wood recyclers and reprocessors will now be able to gain approved FPPs in a timely manner.”