Fire Safety in Offices What You Need To Know

1. Fire Safety in Offices: What You Need To Know A very large proportion of the UK workforce have desk- based jobs – i.e., they work in offices. As such, it is essential to consider the risk of fire breaking out in an office and take all possible steps to remove, or at least reduce such risk. Indeed, if you are the “responsible person” as defined under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, then you are legally required to do so.

2. One of the things that you must do as the responsible person is to carry out a building fire risk assessment of your office and remove or reduce any risks. The chief cause of fires in offices is actually electrical equipment, and this can be because power sockets are overloaded or because the equipment has not been PAT tested on a regular basis. PAT testing by itself is not a legal requirement but the regulations do require you to do everything “reasonably practical” to protect people from harm.

3. You May Appoint A Competent Person Fortunately, the law takes account of the fact that the responsible person in a business may not have the required knowledge to undertake a fire risk assessment for the simple reason that they have not had the necessary training, so they are allowed to appoint a competent person – one with the necessary knowledge – to undertake the fire risk assessment on their behalf. They are still responsible overall, but can get expert help from a specialist company such as ourselves at UK-Fire Risk Assessments to carry out the assessment and make any necessary recommendations that result.

4. The job of a fire risk assessor is to identify fire hazards, and people at risk. He or she must also take steps to eliminate or at least reduce any risk to the minimum. Fire precautions must be undertaken to deal with any remaining risk, particularly if there are flammable materials in the premises, and there must be a plan to deal with any emergency that arises. There are some 22,000 fires every year in non-domestic premises, of which about 5,000 are due to arson. The remainder are classed as “accidental”. It is therefore important that the fire risk assessment is reviewed from time to time and updated where necessary.

5. You also need to have an emergency plan for your office. This means that you need to have an appropriate fire detection system and a method of identifying a false alarm. You need to have someone whose responsibility it is to call the fire brigade, and there must be suitable emergency escape routes which must be kept clear at all times and need to be as short as possible. They should be clearly marked. You also need to have emergency doors that are easy to open, and you may also need emergency lighting.

6. contact us The Stable office, Young Oak Water Lane Oxton Notts Tel: 0115 896 3814 http://www.uk-fireriskassessments.co.uk/