Legislation and Compliance
It will never happen to me A
Tony Beale, managing director Mayfair Fire – part of Green Compliance plc, explains the risks and associated cost of non residential fires across the UK.
ccording to the Office of National Statistics Blue Book, there are 33,000 non-
residential fires per year in the UK. The average cost of a fire is £40,000, and 76 percent of this cost relates only to asset damage (Economic Cost of Fire Report). What about the fines and prosecution costs? What about the loss of business and reputational damage? These are the unexpected extras.
So, why will it never happen to you?
Fire safety and fire regulation is not a sexy topic. Just like drunk driving, wearing a seat belt, stopping smoking and eating five-a-day campaigns, it can take decades to change people’s behaviour towards health and safety issues. Campaigns with shock tactics do make people stand up and listen, but how do
you get from ‘it will never happen to me’ to ‘it will never happen to me, because I’m compliant and I understand the risks of not being so’? Fire safety legislation changed in
2005. This saw the biggest change in 30 years. The Fire Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO) replaces more than 70 pieces of fire safety legislation to make the law more readily available and simpler to understand and comply with. If you are an employer, owner or
occupier of a business or industrial premise, of if you have some degree of control over a commercial premise, you are affected by the FSO. The FSO places a duty on a
‘responsible person’ to carry out a fire risk assessment. Responsible persons are required, following a risk assessment, to implement fire safety measures to reduce the risk to life from fire and to keep the assessment up to date.
Need help?
The Department for Communities and Local Government has published ‘A short guide to making your premises safe from fire’ booklet that provides simple and practical advice and guidance on how to meet FSO requirements. The British Standards Institute will host its Annual Fire Safety Conference on the 25 November 2010 in London to help attendees increase their knowledge and understanding of fire safety best practices and revisions to existing standards. There’s no doubt about it. Fire
is a killer. It kills people and it kills businesses. Eighty percent of businesses never recover from a fire. A North Yorkshire waste management firm was forced to make 33 of its 37 workers redundant
10 Facilities UK - Handbook 2010 - 11
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