When, in 1998, my friend Rosemarie Everton was appointed to the UK’s first ever chair in fire law, at the University of Central Lancashire, it marked the culmination of a 40-year endeavour on her part to establish the study of fire safety law as a serious subject of intellectual pursuit in the UK. Most importantly the recognition afforded by the chair confirmed this strand of jurisprudence as a legal discipline worthy of independent study.
At that time of her appointment, the Fire Precautions Act 1971 focused responsibility for fire safety on the fire authority – the local government-controlled fire service – but otherwise much relied on a patchwork of other statutory and common law duties upheld by individuals such as landlords or employers. The idea of a coherent structure that lay behind the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 was therefore to be welcomed. However, in its implementation, the new legislation prompted many questions for Rosemarie. This was because it effected a radical transfer of responsibility for fire safety, removing it from the fire authority and placing it instead on the “responsible person” – an individual - to be self compliant.
Rosemarie, who has died aged 83, repeatedly cautioned against such a change, in her publications and her teaching. In May 2008, for instance, she suggested in Fire magazine that this cultural shift might come to be criticised if brought under some future public scrutiny, and cause a loss of confidence in fire safety provision – this seems prescient in the light of the Moore-Bick inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Brought up in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham, Rosemarie was the daughter of Stanley Green, a paper merchant, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Hinton), a dance teacher. Her aunt Lilian, who had been a member of the National Fire Service during the second world war, served in the Birmingham Brigade’s “D” division until she retired.
Rosemarie was educated at St Agnes’s Convent high school, Erdington, chosen for its academic quality rather than its religious outlook, and in 1965 she became the first female student in the faculty of law at the University of Birmingham to be awarded a PhD. She was called to the bar in 1966 and the following year was appointed to a part-time lectureship at University College London, soon a full-time appointment.
Rosemarie spent the greater part of her time in academia as a lecturer (later senior lecturer) at the faculty of law at the University of Leicester, from 1971 until she moved to the University of Central Lancashire in 1998. She co-authored books including Fire and the Law (1972), Fire, Safety and the Law (1983), and Public Law and the Retail Sector (1988).
A charming and exquisitely mannered woman, who embraced classical ballet and was passionate about animal welfare, Rosemarie was a confirmed Anglican, a faith that was central to her life.
In 1964 she married Maurice Everton, an engineer at GEC. He died in 2019. Rosemarie is survived by her second cousin, Roger.
