If you are an employer of five people or more, the law requires you to
carry out a fire safety assessment of your premises with the object of
keeping any risk to a minimum and keeping your employees safe. So this
applies to most businesses: even a small shop will often have five or
more employees.
The law concerned is The Regulatory Reform (Fire
Safety) Order 2005, and it doesn’t just apply to employers by any
manner of means. It also applies to educational premises; small and
medium places of assembly holding 300 people or less; large places of
assembly (over300); theatres, cinemas, and similar places; healthcare
premises; residential care premises; sleeping accommodation; private
rented accommodation including a house converted into two or more flats;
transport premises; animal premises and stables; and even open-air
events and venues. In other words, pretty much everywhere! The HSE also
has a separate guide for those who work in construction.
The
responsible person could be you, the employer, or you may delegate the
responsibility to someone else. It could be a landlord. It could be the
owner of a stables. And so on.
The duty of the responsible
person is to undertake a fire risk assessment and to keep a written
record of it. The assessment must be reviewed on a regular basis. It
also needs to be reviewed if anything changes. This could be something
as simple as taking on an additional employee or changing the layout of
your shop storeroom. For example, you might change your storeroom around
and the effect is that a fire escape route is altered or becomes
unusable.
When carrying out the fire risk assessment you must
identify the hazards, identify people at risk, evaluate and remove or
reduce the risks, and record your findings. You also need to prepare an
emergency plan and provide training for your staff during their working
hours.
You also need to prepare an evacuation plan showing fire
escape routes that are as short as possible and enough exits for all
people to escape – including those with mobility needs. The latter item
can immediately cause a problem because if you have an office block you
may have someone in a wheelchair on the fourth floor and the lift cannot
be used, so you need to have people allocated to help them down the
stairs. You also need to have emergency lighting where required, and
emergency doors that open easily. You need to have a staff meeting point
and have regular emergency drills - at least one per year.
You
may need a fire detection and warning system and it needs to be checked
regularly to ensure everything is working. You need to carry out checks
on a regular basis to ensure that fire doors close correctly, escape
routes are clear, fire escapes can be opened easily, and fire exit signs
are in the right place and easily visible. You should also check fire
extinguishers and have them regularly maintained. You should keep a
record of any faults in systems and equipment and note any remedial
action taken.
In addition, you need to ensure that any dangerous
and flammable substances on your premises are stored safely, and away
from anything that could set light to them.
If all of this
seems like a lot of work, that is because it is. Furthermore, unless you
have received specific training it may well be that you won’t spot
something that could be a hazard. Some things may be obvious, but others
not.
This is why many businesses today now use the services of
specialist fire risk assessment companies that can come in and
undertake the assessment for you. They have people who have been trained
and know what to look for. Certainly, there is a cost of a fire risk
assessment, but it is much easier than trying to do it yourself. Using
such a company means that nothing will get missed, and they should
provide you with the written report you are required to keep, along with
their recommendations, if any. This way you will know that you are
complying with the law, and the cost of a fire risk assessment is
probably less than it would cost you to do it yourself, because your
time is valuable and is better spent on running your business.
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