Fire Safety: Your obligations when making alterations.
15th November 2021
Are you making alternations or extensions to your building? If so, you must comply with the building regulations, including designing fire safety into the new building. You should consider:
- emergency routes and exits
- fire detection and warning systems
- fire fighting equipment
- the removal or safe storage of dangerous substances
- an emergency fire evacuation plan
- the needs of vulnerable people, for example the elderly, young children or those with disabilities
- providing information to employees and other people on the premises
- staff fire safety training
Who’s responsible?
You’re the responsible person when it comes to the fire safety in a business or other non-domestic premises if you’re:
- the employer for those parts of premises staff may go to
- the managing agent or owner for shared parts of premises or shared fire safety equipment such as fire-warning systems or sprinklers
- the occupier, such as self-employed people or voluntary organisations if they have any control or any other person who has some control over a part of the premises
Although in many premises the responsible person will be obvious, there may be times when a number of people have some responsibility.
The Fire Safety Order also applies if you have paying guests, for example if you run a bed and breakfast, guesthouse or let a self-catering property.
What are your responsibilities?
If you are the responsible person, you must make sure you carry out a fire-risk assessment although you can pass this task to some other competent person, like us at Safeguard. However, you will still be responsible, in law, for meeting the order. The responsible person, either on their own or with any other responsible person, must as far as is reasonably practical make sure that everyone on the premises, or nearby, can escape safely if there is a fire.
As the responsible person you must:
- carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly
- tell staff or their representatives about the risks you’ve identified
- put in place, and maintain, appropriate fire safety measures
- plan for an emergency
- provide staff information, fire safety instruction and training
At Safeguard, we pride ourselves on giving our customers total peace of mind by ensuring they’re fire safety compliant at all times. We offer Fire Maintenance Agreements which are perfect for large organisations and places with high footfall.
What’s stopping you?
We are a team of fully qualified electrical contractors; we pride ourselves on customer satisfaction and long-term relationships with people and organisations. We cover both commercial and residential installations with specific expertise in fire safety, CCTV systems, remote monitoring, door entry systems and fire alarm installation and servicing.
CONTACT US TODAY ON 02921 111095 OR EMAIL FRAZER@SAFEGUARDELECTRICAL.CO
