Leicestershire Fire Service conducting site visits

All work premises, with few exceptions, are subject to the Fire Safety (Regulatory Reform) Order 2005 and a suitable and sufficient fire safety risk assessment must be undertaken and reviewed on a regular basis to help safeguard both staff and visitors from fire.

LRB Consulting has noticed an increase in the number of new inquiries we are receiving relating to visits from Fire Officers wishing to inspect their fire safety risk assessments. In particular a number of these calls are coming in from Leicestershire businesses, which leads us to believe that businesses in Leicestershire need to make sure their fire safety risk assessments are up to date.

Lets look at a recent example, in 2009 a Leicester hotel caught fire, and the fire brigade attended, it took over 20 minutes for a responsible person from the hotel to make themselves known to the Fire Brigade. Following the incident a Fire Officer raised concerns with the hotel, and it was subsequently inspected. The fire officers found that the hotel had multiple failings related to fire safety and was potentially in breach of the Fire Safety order. The hotel was later found guilty and was fined £29,715 with costs of £8,000. The general manager of the hotel chain was also fined £2,895 with costs of £380. But the biggest cost to the hotel was in the badly damaged reputation, had they acted earlier and had appropriate fire safety steps in place, including a fire safety risk assessment, the fire may not have happened.

If the Fire Officer considers that your risk assessments are not suitable, or indeed any provision of the Fire Safety Order has not been met, they can take you to court, whilst this is rare, it can and does happen. Remember, it is best to achieve compliance long before the Fire Officer comes knocking, so if you are concerned that you may not meet the fire safety order, or you are looking for a Fire Safety Risk Assessment, give LRB Consulting a call on 01509 550023, or take a look at some of the Fire Safety services that we offer here.