Fire risk assessment who is responsible

Get help. Health and Safety Articles. Please follow and like us:. Large Rectangular. Share this: Tweet. Print Email Pininterest. Like this: Like Loading What are Reportable Incidents and Examples. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. All too often, they have appointed a person with little, or no experience of assessing the risk of fire and ensuring measures are in place to protect people, property and processes.

Even worse, the owners, or Directors of the company, have failed to realise and inform their responsible person, that failing to carry out their duties could result a prison sentence. I firmly believe that the fire risk assessment should be conducted by an experienced professional, and preferably someone who holds a third-party accreditations, such as the qualifications issued by BAFE, or the Fire service training college.

Then, should the fire risk assessment state that a fire alarm system is required, the assessment must state to what category the system should be designed, and installed by a BAFE approved installer.

Fire Risk Assessments and the Responsible Person. Colin Milligan. It is essential that this list of actions be completed as they are designed to ensure the overall safety of the building and its occupants. The designated responsible person is in charge of ensuring the building maintains an acceptable standard of fire safety. A Fire Risk Assessment should be extremely thorough and assess the building across a comprehensive range of safety criteria.

However, the level of detail required in the assessment is largely dictated by the overall complexity of the building, for example a small single compartment shop will likely have a less complex assessment.

Despite the uniqueness in complexity and criteria of every Fire Risk Assessment, there are a number of general criteria that must be considered by the assessor , these are as a guide —. The competence of an individual conducting the assessment is based upon their technical competency qualifications and experience in adequately assessing the building against all the criteria mentioned in the previous section etc.

Additionally, the person that is completing the assessment needs to be able to record all significant findings clearly and in detail, develop a Fire Safety Action Plan including necessary changes and adequately record these actions in writing, implement that action plan if necessary, and be able to continuously update the Fire Risk Assessment. A professional fire risk assessor undergoes lots of detailed training and is fully versed in all of the most recent guidelines and legal requirements, including how they should be applied to different kinds of buildings.

Watson and Watson provide a Risk Assessment training programs in addition to performing Fire Risk Assessments themselves to ensure that your building is properly assessed. The consequences for not having an up-to-date Fire Risk Assessment vary on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, the offender can face severe fines whilst in others the offender can even face a prison sentence as well, this also being balanced against the potential loss of life! Therefore, it is essential that a building at least meets all the specified requirements, and the fire safety of the building is continuously monitored.

This will ensure that no important factors are missed, and you can ensure that the building and occupants that you are responsible for are safe. Please call us on or send us an email for more information. We pride ourselves on providing comprehensive, no nonsense services at an agreed fixed fee sensible price. Our dedicated Consultants are fully insured professionally qualified Health and Safety Specialists and are registered with IOSH; and as such adhere to the Continuous Professional Development programme.

We work with clients across the length and breadth of the UK and in a diverse spectrum of industry sectors. In the unlikely event you do not achieve your SSIP accreditation and you have fully complied with our guidance and advice we will give a full refund of the fees you have paid to us. Contact Us.