Fire Risk Assessments Bridgwater. 

What is a fire risk assessment?

 

A careful look at your premises and the people who use them, from a fire prevention perspective. It’s about understanding the potential risks, then improving your fire safety precautions to keep people safe.

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The aims of the fire risk assessment are:

• to identify the fire hazards;

• to reduce the risk of those hazards causing harm to as low as reasonably practicable; and

• to decide what physical fire precautions and management arrangements are necessary to ensure the safety of people in the premises if a fire does start.

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Do I need a fire risk assessment?

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Yes, it’s your legal obligation to have a current and in date fire risk assessment for your business. 

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​The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) places a duty on the responsible person to take general fire precautions to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of the people on the premises and in the immediate vicinity. ‘Responsible person’ means “the person who has control of the premises in connection with the carrying on of a trade, business or other undertaking”. In practice this will usually be the landlord, but in the case of absentee landlords where the “carrying on of the business” is undertaken by a managing agent it may be the managing agent.

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The responsible person must carry out a fire risk assessment for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions and other measures needed to
comply with the FSO. Although under the FSO this requirement only applies to the common parts of premises, in practice the responsible person will need to take into account the entire premises – including, to some extent, the units of accommodation themselves. While the FSO has limited application to certain types of property (see paragraph 35), the principles of fire safety risk assessment apply across the board, and their application should ensure compliance with all the legislation.

 

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 - ARTICLE 9 – RISK ASSESSMENT

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Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 - require that all Responsible Persons must record their completed fire risk assessment, and in full

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Do I need to review my current risk assessment?

As the responsible person you must carry out and regularly review a fire risk assessment of the premises.

If you are responsible for a building, for example a employer, owner or occupier of premises that aren't a 'single private dwelling' (a private home), you need to make sure a suitably competent person completes a Fire Risk Assessment.

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The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 - ARTICLE 9 PART 3 - 'Any such assessment must be reviewed by the responsible person regularly so as to keep it up to date'.

 

We recommend you should review your fire safety risk assessment annually (12months) to ensure your compliance with the regulatory reform (fire safety) order 2005 or sooner if:

• Alterations are made to the structure of the building

• Personnel numbers increase significantly

• There has been a change in the use of premises

• Anything else that could impact the fire safety within the building