Legal requirements
Under the requirements of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 employers (and/or building owners or occupiers) must ensure that a fire safety risk assessment is carried out and kept up to date. This approach is very similar to health and safety management requirements, where it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that risks associated with their business activities are identified and managed.
The responsible person
If you’re an employer, owner, landlord or occupier of business or other non-domestic premises, you are responsible for fire safety and are known as the ‘responsible person’.
Who can carry out a fire risk assessment?
This fire risk assessment template has been designed around the HSE’s ‘5 steps to risk assessment’ format and is for use by anyone who has a sufficient level of competence for the particular premises and associated business activity they wish to assess. If they are competent to do so, the responsible person for fire safety can carry out the fire risk assessment themselves with the help of standard fire safety risk assessment guides produced by the ‘Department for Communities and Local Government’ (DCLG). These guides have been provided for a range of premises and there should be one that covers the activity carried out by your service area/business, and can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/workplace-fire-safety-your-responsibilities/fire-safety-advice-documents.
No one should contemplate carrying out a fire risk assessment unless they are competent to do so and they are familiar with the ‘Fire Safety Risk Assessment Guide’ for their particular premises. References have been made within the KCC template to the relevant sections of the guide documents.
Competence
The responsible person needs to appoint one or more competent person(s) (this could be yourself) to carry out any of the preventive and protective measures needed to comply with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Competence is defined for the purposes of this legislation as, someone with enough training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to be able to implement these measures properly.
Choosing a competent fire risk assessor or competent assistance
There are many people offering fire risk assessment services and there are many training courses relating to fire risk assessment, but not all will guarantee a competent risk assessor. You need to be relatively satisfied that the fire risk assessor providing this service is competent to do so. It is advised that you check that anyone who wishes to provide this service has independent registration with, or certification from, a professional or certification body. Examples of this are the Institution of Fire Engineers, the Institute of Fire Prevention Officers or the Institute of Fire Safety Management. Not all memberships though can give an indication of experience or knowledge. Membership grades such as ‘Member’ or ‘Graduate Member’ will require evidence of experience and qualifications to be accepted. Affiliate or Associate memberships do not normally require this. Post nominals can normally be used by qualified members such as MIFireE (member or the Institution of Fire Engineers), GIFireE (Graduate Member of the Institution of Fire Engineers), MIFPO (member of the Institue of Fire Prevention Officers), MIFSM (member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers). You shoud check the relevant website for membership criteria. This is still not a guarantee of competence but it will give you a good indication that they have a certain level of knowledge and experience to be accepted as members. Some of these certifying bodies will also have a ‘Risk Assessors Register’ which means the fire risk assessments of the registered person will have been reviewed by the certifying body and judged to be of the necessary quality. You can also ask the risk assessor for references or ask to see previous examples of their work.
Using the fire risk assessment template
Before starting the fire risk assessment, if at all possible, the competent person should normally obtain a plan of the building. This will help when carrying out the assessment, to understand the layout and any fire safety features of the building.
This fire risk assessment template is not only designed to incorporate the 5 steps to risk assessment format that the HSE promotes, but it also specifically includes fire safety measures that need to be considered in the assessment.
The 5 steps of the template
In the template once the building description and other relevant site information is entered you will find there are five steps identified for the risk assessment.
Step 1 identify the hazards
The first step is to identify the fire hazards; this may be initially completed through discussions with the responsible persons, but be prepared to update this if additional fire hazards are identified during your discussions and subsequent tour of the premises. In this stage you will also identify if there are any higher risk areas of the premises.
Step 2 identify the people at risk
The second step is to identify who is at risk and if there are any people that may be at greater risk than others. For example this section may include anyone with medical conditions, disabled people, young children or the elderly.
Review of the fire safety management arrangements
After completing step 2 it is suggested that you review the fire safety management arrangements in place. Within the assessment there are a number of questions designed specifically for this purpose. These should be completed during your interview with the responsible person, or if you are the responsible person you should be able to answer the questions yourself.
Step 3 (a) evaluate the risk and adequacy of existing fire safety arrangements
The evaluation box provided in step 3 is actually the final step in completing the risk assessment document. In order to complete this box you need have gathered all the relevant information including the management arrangements and a review of the material provisions for fire safety. In this section you will evaluate the risk, based on all the information you have gained during the assessment. This is where you consider the likelihood and what the consequences could be of a fire starting. This brings together the hazards, the fuel sources, the management arrangements and the physical aspects of the building including fire fighting and suppression equipment. To assist with your overall evaluation, Appendix A provides a methodology for calculating the category of risk.
Step 3 (b) adequacy of existing fire safety measures
Part b) of step 3 reviews the adequacy of existing fire safety measures and contributes to your final evaluation of the risk. This section will incorporate both findings from your review of management arrangements and physical review of the building you are assessing. You can record your observations from your site inspection directly onto this section. There is a tick box within each category to highlight if there are any recommended actions, which should also be
transposed into the priority action plan at step 4. It is strongly recommended that you take photographs of significant issues and include these in your report, as this helps to validate your fire risk assessment. This will also help you when writing up your assessment, to recall the issues and help anyone reading the assessment to understand what you are referring to.
Step 4 priority action plan
Step 4 is where you record all of your suggested recommendations from your assessment and prioritise them for action.
Step 5 assessment review
Your assessment should be continually monitored to ensure that it is still current and all identified recommendations are being considered. Step 5 of your risk assessment is to formally review the assessment; KCC’s policy is that the risk assessment initially completed by a competent person can be reviewed in-house, provided there have been no changes in the layout of the premises or changes in the fire safety management systems since the last assessment. A new assessment should be carried out if there are any changes to the work activity or building, or any other matters to which the assessment relates, and which could affect the validity of the assessment. A new fire risk assessment must be completed every 3 years by a competent person.
Further advice
If you need any further advice about completing your fire risk assessment, please contact your Health and Safety Adviser or telephone the advice line number below.
Health and Safety Advice Line: 03000 418456
Health and Safety Team September 2017 Page 3 of 3