Fire safety and compliance information for clients

The implementation of a fully compliant fire risk assessment or fire safety management plan can seem a daunting prospect. However, we can help you draw up a short, medium and long-term action plan that allows you to take into consideration the inevitable budgetary constraints you may be under. We are keen to stress that a pragmatic approach can still allow for full compliance with the Regulatory Reform Order.

A useful check-list for housing organisations, for example, can consider the following points:

• Identify a person(s) in your organisation with responsibility for ensuring compliance with the Regulatory Reform Order and for assessing fire risk
• A comprehensive risk assessment should identify fire hazards, identify people at risk, remove, reduce and protect from risk, provide information to plan and train to minimise risk and should be continuously reviewed
• Place fire safety information into all tenancy handbooks or tenancy start-up packs
• Liaise with your local fire and rescue service to raise awareness of fire safety in the communities with which you work and to offer free home fire checks carried out by the fire brigade
• Consider making it a requirement for all existing and new residents to agree to have a free home fire safety check as part of their tenancy agreement
• In blocks of flats or maisonettes make sure all residents are aware of appropriate action to be taken in the event of fire
• Take particular care to make sure residents whose first language is not English have access to clear and understandable fire safety information
• Fully assess and respond to the needs of vulnerable residents in relation to fire safety
• Consider installing smoke alarms in all properties
• Consider installing domestic and residential sprinklers into homes.

It is of key importance to liaise effectively with your residents, ensuring communication and inclusion throughout the whole fire safety process. The responsible person(s) has to provide for all safety measures identified through the risk assessment. However, the relationship requires responsibility from both sides, which has to include an implicit mutual respect for the duty of care. Therefore, appropriate communication is essential.

M B Hale Consultancy is here to help

We are committed to working with clients to ensure that there is a clear understanding of the requirements placed upon them for the implementation of the current fire safety legislation. Added to this is a determination to work in partnership with the fire service and clients to develop and establish best practice, in order to provide a service that not only meets the requirements of the legislation but helps to provide safe environments for people to live and work.

Our approach allows you to rest assured that you will be implementing best practice easily and seamlessly. Our four stage process of fire risk assessment, specification, scheduling & programming and finally compiling a robust maintenance regime, presents an appropriate break down of the elements for full compliance with the fire safety legislation.

We can join forces with you at any of the four stages, to either fit in with your existing implementation, or to tackle the whole process together. We can also audit retrospectively to doubly ensure your compliance.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005

You can download a PDF copy of The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 from the UK Government’s website by clicking this link: www.legislation.gov.uk