Fife Council should face up to its responsibilities and carry out fire risk assessments in all the properties in its ownership and not pass the burden on to local volunteers who run halls.
That is the view of Taybridgehead councillor Maggie Taylor, who is relieved that something is going to be done to address deficiencies in proper fire procedures and risk assessments within all Fife community halls.
Mrs Taylor first raised the issue when it was realised that the smoke alarm system used in the Gregory Hall, Tayport, was the ringing of a bell.
This bell was the same one used to alert the children of the Tayport Playgroup using that hall that Santa was on his way.
This caused much confusion among the children when it was time to do their fire alarm instruction.
Subsequently, a report on fire safety in Fife Council community halls was prepared by Neil McFarlane, chief fire officer, and this highlighted the fact that very few of the halls have proper fire procedures and risk assessments in place.
There are 104 community halls, and an audit was done on eight of the halls owned and managed by Fife Council and three run by voluntary management committees.
Fire risk assessments were present in all of the sampled Fife Council directly-managed properties, although one was out of date.
Some of the fire risk assessments were not of a required standard.
None of the facilities operated by voluntary management committees were able to provide a fire risk assessment.
The records to demonstrate maintenance of the measures provided within the premises audited were not available on all occasions.
Deficiencies were identified in all but two of the premises.
In two of the premises, the lack of automatic fire Detection had been identified in the risk assessments, but was still a deficiency with no time-scaled action plan on addressing the issue.