Your Responsibilities
Black & Gold Fire Safety and Electrical Services Ltd understand that fire safety legislation can be confusing and overwhelming for business owners and landlords. Let us take that pressure from you by designing, installing, and maintaining the perfect fire alarm system for your business needs, abiding by all up-to-date legislation, and ensuring that the safety needs of you and your dependents are always a top priority.
You can read the government’s web page detailing your fire safety responsibilities here.
A SUMMARY OF
UK fire safety legistlation
As a business owner or landlord in the UK, you are legally obligated to:
- Ensure all employees participate in fire safety training and always have access to fire safety instructions and information.
- Identify all necessary fire safety measures and put these into practice.
- Create and maintain a process to manage these fire safety measures.
- Create and maintain an emergency plan.
- Carry out and record regular reviews of your fire safety measures and risk assessments.
Fire safety measures include, but are not limited to, the installation and maintenance of fire alarms, signage, and fire prevention and extinguishing tools.
Fire risk assessments
Written fire risk assessments are required for all businesses of 5 or more people and are an essential way of ensuring that effective procedures are implemented to keep your premises and people safe by reducing the risk of fire, while also providing safe processes to follow if a fire should occur.
Your fire risk assessment (or FRA for short) is the starting point for all fire precautions activity. FRAs are live documents that must be reviewed and updated regularly following any changes in premises, processes, personnel, equipment or following a near-miss or real fire.
Black & Gold Fire Safety and Electrical Services Ltd is a fire risk assessment company with FRA-trained assessors able to provide you with an extensive fire risk assessment specific to your site and business, together with a written report highlighting significant findings and recommendations.
Our assessors will pay you a return visit to walk you through our findings and recommendations, as required by the FRA
How We Complete Your Risk Assessment
There are several steps that must be taken when completing a risk assessment
Identify all fire hazards
1
Identify any people who may be at risk in the event of a fire
2
Evaluate and remove or reduce the identified risks
3
Record all findings
4
Following on from the assessment, the following steps must be taken:
- Review the risk assessment regularly (at least yearly) and make any required updates
- Prepare an emergency plan based on your findings
- Provide training to all employees
What information would you expect to find in a risk assessment?
- All emergency routes and exits
- Implemented fire detection and warning systems
- Potential sources of ignition, oxygen and/or fuel
- Precautions taken to prevent and restrict the spread of fire
- Available firefighting equipment and its state
- Existing fire evacuation plan
- All information and training materials provided to people or located around the premises
- Persons responsible for implementing the emergency plan
- Records of any staff training
- The type and number of people of risk, including vulnerable people and/or personas (e.g., the elderly or disabled), and any considerations that have been made to keep them safe
What should be included in an emergency plan?
- Clear passageways to all escape routes
- Clearly marked escape routes
- Emergency doors that open easily
- Emergency lighting where required
- Training for all employees
- A safe meeting point
- Enough escape routes and exits for all people within the premises to escape
- Special arrangements for people with mobility needs, such as a chair lift