Carrying out a fire safety assessment in the UK is by no means an easy task if you have not had the required training to do so. And yet, if you are the owner or manager of a business, an employer, an occupier, the landlord, or anyone else with control of the premises, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires you to do just that.
There are dozens of different things that can cause fire hazards in a business, starting with the age and design of the building. It is necessary to evaluate the people who are at risk, and this could be anyone at all if, for instance, you own a shop or store. Any member of the public can enter your premises and they could be young children, elderly and infirm, disabled, or even deaf or blind.
When you carry out a fire risk assessment you also need to consider sources of fuel and ignition and means of escape in the event of fire. You need to think about fire safety equipment including fire extinguishers, signage, and training your employees and carrying out fire drills so that everyone knows what to do in an emergency.
You also need to undertake measures to remove any fire risk, or if something cannot be removed you need to make it as safe as possible. For instance, you may use hazardous items in the course of your business such as flammable materials. In this case they need to be stored in a safe place and away from any possible sources of fire.
In addition, when conducting a fire risk assessment, you also need to keep a written record of it if you employ five or more people, and this record should meet with the “suitable and sufficient” criteria of a fire officer who may inspect your premises.
There are so many things to take into consideration. For example, do you have enough fire extinguishers? Are they of the right type? Are they in the right places? Do you have sufficient signage telling people what to do in the event of fire? Are there trip hazards on your escape route or routes? Do your employees know where to meet up when escaping from a fire? Have you got the correct fire safety doors? Are they in the right places? Do you know about all this? Do you know ANY of it?
As The “Responsible Person” It Is Your Job
As the “responsible person” in your business it is, nonetheless, your job to ensure that all of this is taken into account, so that your premises are as safe and secure as they can be when it comes to the chances of a fire breaking out.
If you are like most business owners, or other “responsible persons” it is very likely that you do not understand all of this, and that is fair enough because you have not had the appropriate training. Fortunately, the law allows for this, because it lets you delegate the fire safety assessment to a “competent person”. In this case, you can use our services at UK-Fire Risk Assessments. It is what we do.
Every business is different. Different buildings, different ways of working, different employee numbers, different machinery, different office equipment, different materials used – different everything. It takes a trained eye to look at every tiny detail and to establish what is safe and what is not, and what to do in order to make things safer when it comes to the risk of fire.
One of our expert team at UK-Fire Risk Assessments can visit your premises and evaluate all of the different aspects of your work. What you do and how you do it. The materials that you use if you are engaged in manufacturing, or how you store things. For instance, you may own a clothing store in which case most of the products that you sell will be flammable.
You might need some additional fire extinguishers, or you might need to put them in different places. Your escape route might have things that could get in the way.
No worries. When you use us for your fire risk assessment, we will advise you of anything which needs changing in order to be compliant, and we will also give you the written report that you need.