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Fire safety law
Do you own, manage or operate a business? If so, you need to comply with fire safety law. For more information, contact RELM Consultants Ltd in Northamptonshire today.
Ensure the safety of your staff and customers
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, is the fire safety legislation followed across the UK, that applies in general to all kinds of non-domestic premises. These premises will include all workplaces, commercial premises and those premises managed by all voluntary organisations. It also includes the self-employed and premises that the public have access to, including, in England and Wales, the common parts of houses in multiple occupation and multi occupied residential buildings like flats.
In an attempt to replace the 118 pieces of our previous fire legislation including the old fire certificate, The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 shifts responsibility of any fire safety to anybody who has a day-to-day control of any premises. Primarily the responsibility has now been shifted from the fire authorities to the 'responsible person or the duty holder'.
If you are an occupier, manager, employer, owner of a business or any other non-domestic premises, you will be responsible for all fire safety issues. You are therefore known as the 'duty holder' or the ‘responsible person'.
As the 'duty holder' or the 'responsible person', you are required to carry out a 'fire risk assessment' of your premises and review it often. This helps identify what you have to do regarding the necessary fire precautions and all other fire safety duties. This helps you make a plan that is necessary to protect and save people. This is a standard part of our Health and Safety check. Please refer to our building regulations for fire safety.
Offence for not complying
By virtue of article 32(1) of the order, it is an offence for any person mentioned in article 5(3) (and thus, any fire risk assessor), to fail to comply with article 9 (or any other requirement or duty under the order placed on them by article 8 to 22), where that failure places one or more relevant persons at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire.
For more information regarding the articles, you can refer to our statutory instruments document
here.
Penalties you may face
In other words, if a risk assessor carries out a risk assessment for a premises and that risk assessment is not “suitable and sufficient” as required by article 9 of the order, they will be committing an offence if the failure places one or more relevant persons at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire.
A fire risk assessment is a corner stone to identify the required general fire precautions that the person responsible for the premises needs to take to comply with their legal duty. A failure to identify the required fire safety precautions and the absence of them could therefore potentially place persons at risk in the case of fire.
A person who is guilty of such an offence is potentially liable to a fine not exceeding £5,000 in a Magistrates Court, or to an unlimited fine and / or imprisonment if the matter is dealt within a Crown Court.
Based in Northamptonshire, we serve customers across the UK. For more information about fire safety law, contact RELM Consultants Ltd on
07713 496 006
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