Fire Safety Assessment
You must under The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 make a suitable and sufficient Fire Safety Assessment, the excerpt from section 9 of the order below highlights this.
9.—(1) The responsible person must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed on him by or under this Order.
The above applies if you are an employer, owner or occupier of a business or industrial premises, or if you have some control over any commercial premises then you have a legal responsibility to have a fire risk assessment in place. The fire safety assessment needs to be completed by a competent person.
The Complete Fire Solutions Fire Safety Assessment
To carry out a suitable and sufficient Fire Safety Assessment we would need to physically walk the site entering every cupboard, storeroom, work area, plant room, accessible voids etc. An external inspection of the building is also made.
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We would need to see the certificates of inspection or maintenance records for the following where you have them:
- Fire alarm system.
- Fire extinguishers.
- Smoke Vents.
- Dry Risers.
- Fire Hydrants.
- Emergency lighting.
- Gas suppression systems
- Sprinklers
Any other fire protection equipment not listed above eg hose reels.
We would need to see maintenance inspection records for the following where they apply:
- Passenger lift
- Extraction systems
- Air conditioning systems
- Gas appliance maintenance records (heating)
- PAT Testing records
Our PAS (British Standard) compliant Fire Safety Assessment Covers:
- Documentation
- Fire Alarm System
- Detection Systems
- Emergency Lighting
- Staff Training
- Fire Extinguishers
- Signage
- Means of Escape
- Smoking
- Fire Procedures
- Arson
- Sources of Ignition
- Cleanliness and Tidiness
- Storage
- Flammable Liquids-Toxics-Corrosives
- Machinery
- Portable Heaters
- LPG and other Gaseous Cylinders
- Hydrants, Dry Risers and Sprinklers
- Automatic Extinguishing Systems
- Vehicles
- Gas, Mains or Tank Storage
When should I review my Fire Safety assessment?
The fire safety assessment is a living document, which cannot remain valid for an unlimited length of time. It needs to be reviewed periodically.
For compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 fire safety assessments need to be reviewed:
- regularly (see below)
- when material alterations take place
- when there is a significant change in the matters that were taken into account as the safety assessment was carried out.
- when there is a reason to suspect that the original fire safety assessment is no longer valid (eg after a fire that occurred within, after completion of significant works completed to address shortcomings identified by the fire safety assessment.
- after a change of use or process.
- after a significant increase in employee numbers
Review of a fire safety assessment is not necessarily the same as a repeat of the entire fire safety assessment process. If a thorough fire safety assessment has been carried out, a shorter review exercise might be carried out regularly, with a more fundamental new fire safety assessment competed at less regular intervals.
The frequency with which fire safety assessments should be reviewed in the absence of any known changes is not defined in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The date by which a fire safety assessment should be reviewed should be determined as part of the process of carrying out a fire safety assessment.
The frequency of review should take into account the rate with which changes, including those arising from the need for maintenance work, are likely to occur, and the risk to people that might arise from changes. This means that a less frequent review might be acceptable if there is close management control, including frequent routine inspections.
For further guidance and advice contact Complete Fire Solutions.
