Your questions answered: Fire Risk Assessments
1st July 2021
All businesses and residential apartment blocks must conduct a Fire Risk Assessment “FRA”.
A FRA reviews the building’s fire risks and makes recommendations to improve the safety. If you have more than five occupants in the building, your fire risk assessment must be written down.
Who conducts the FRA?
The FRA may be conducted by a ‘competent‘ individual, which gives room for a non-qualified fire risk assessor to complete the assessment. But as we’re considering life and death, the person responsible must be confident and comfortable assessing the building against fire risk factors. So, if you’re ever unsure, we advise using a qualified, registered Fire Risk Assessor.
What are the fire risks?
Every FRA is unique and there are numerous fire prevention and fire risk factors that should be assessed. Here’s just a handful of considerations:
- The building’s layout, nature and number of occupants
- Fire risk for potentially vulnerable occupants
- Fire sources of ignition
- Appropriate types and location of fire safety equipment
- Evacuation drills
- Building’s history of fire hazards or loss
- Safety signage
- And much more
When should they be reviewed?
If your building’s purpose, structure or occupants change, we recommend you do a full review of your FRA. Changes like these may seem small, but they can significantly change your building’s fire risk and safety plans, so a new review should be documented. In addition, annual FRA reviews after the original assessment must be complete, as well as a new FRA every 5 years.
What is a Fire Risk Assessment?
The FRA is split in two parts: a review that assesses the building’s fire safety and requirements that must be met to ensure the building is compliant.
Who is responsible for maintaining the FRA?
By law, every premises needs a designated person who is responsible for the fire safety. The ‘responsible person’ must ensure all fire safety tasks are complete and recommendations are acted upon so the FRA remains valid. Sometimes small business owners are their company’s FRA, whilst letting agents and landlords can act act as the responsible person for their tenants’ buildings.
Where can I find my building’s FRA?
All building occupants have the right to access the Fire Risk Assessment. which should be maintained by the responsible person. If you discover that the FRA is void or incomplete, you should ask the responsible person to have an assessment conducted immediately to ensure the safety of the occupants. The absence of a Fire Risk Assessment and fit and appropriate fire safety precautions, can incur high penalties, including imprisonment in extreme negligence cases.
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.
