subject: Fire Risk Assessments - They are a legal requirement don't ya know? [print this page] Fire Risk Assessments - They are a legal requirement don't ya know?
2 years ago the law changed in the uk, and now all British Businesses have got a legal duty to execute a Fire Risk Assessment on their place of work. For anybody who is wondering if it pertains to your workplace, I will tell you that it does, unless you work at home, offshore, in a field, in the air or down a borehole!
Legislation which covers this is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which came up into effect in 2006 for England, Scotland and Wales (and 2008 for Northern Ireland).
When you aren't fully up to date or have not yet done a Fire Risk Assessment, you have got you don't need to worry!
The law now tells people that a Responsible Person' will have to be designated or all workplaces, and that this person ought to undertake a Fire Risk Assessment. When your organisation employs five or even more people, you should also try to record the findings of the assessment.
A Responsible Person is defined as the owner, or person responsible for all of the workplace. Once you share a building with other organisations, the responsibility may be shared among several people. If you have responsibility for the other people in your organisation, it is safe to assume you may be the Responsible Person, even if other people are too.
It is an often quoted figure that more than 70% of companies linked to major fires either don't reopen or fail within 36 months.
While I can't in point of fact trace this statement to its source, it without a doubt appears to be possible. Whether or not it is totally accurate or otherwise, a fire is a thing your organization can be a lot healthier without. All people are completing these Fire Risk Assessments as a result of law, but it's in fact just giving a formal structure to what you should be doing anyway within the best interests of our organisations.
I've contributed the last 20 years producing large public buildings, and for all that time have essentially been taking all the actions that the new Order requires of us, besides recording it in this new way that the Fire Risk Assessments format provides for us. It is basically what you should be doing anyway, and with a bit of guidance, the formal recording part doesn't need to hurt particularly once you've done the Fire Risk Assessment.
Unless you will have a particularly large or complex business, there's no valid reason why you can't carry out a Fire Risk Assessment with relative ease. Find out how you can produce a Fire Risk Assessments please check out this particular wonderful web-site at phoenixfire.co.uk
