Do you need a Fire Risk Assessment?
1. Who’s responsible
If you’re an landlord, business owner, occupier, or other non-domestic premises, you’ll be the person responsible for fire safety. You’re known as the ‘responsible person’. The Fire Safety Order also applies if you run a bed and breakfast, guesthouse or let a self-catering property as you have paying guests.
Responsibilities
As the responsible person you must:
- carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly
- tell staff or their representatives about the risks you’ve identified
- put in place, and maintain, appropriate fire safety measures
- plan for an emergency
- provide staff information, fire safety instruction and training
Non-domestic premises
Non-domestic premises are:
- all workplaces and commercial premises
- all premises the public have access to
- the common areas of multi-occupied residential buildings
2. Fire risk assessments
As the responsible person you must carry out and regularly review a fire risk assessment of the premises. This will identify what you need to do to prevent fire and keep people safe.
You’ll need to consider:
- emergency routes and exits
- fire detection and warning systems
- fire fighting equipment
- the removal or safe storage of dangerous substances
- an emergency fire evacuation plan
- the needs of vulnerable people, eg the elderly, young children or those with disabilities
- providing information to employees and other people on the premises
- staff fire safety training
Help with the assessment
You can do the fire risk assessment yourself with the help of standard fire safety advice documents.
You’ll need to appoint a ‘competent person’ to help, eg a professional risk assessor, if you don’t have the expertise or time to do the fire risk assessment yourself.
Your local fire and rescue authority might be able to give you advice if you’re not sure your risk assessment’s been carried out properly. However, they can’t carry out risk assessments for you.
