NEWS Unregistered fire risk assessors used by councils


NEW RESEARCH by Inside Housing has found that many UK councils are using ‘unregistered’ fire risk assessors to ‘decide if their buildings are safe’. The news outlet noted that


regular fire risk assessments (FRAs) are a ‘big part of most fire safety strategies’, though the ‘prevalence’ of type 1 FRAs, which consider ‘only the communal areas, and not the walls, windows or the inside of flats’, are matched by ‘questions over who actually carries them out’. When the Regulatory Reform


(Fire Safety) Order 2005 [FSO] was brought in, responsibility for FRAs changed from the fire and rescue services to building owners, but guidance ‘remains silent’ on ‘who should actually do’ an FRA, with no competency requirement ‘of any kind’ in law. This was left ‘entirely up to’ building owners to ‘decide who was qualified’, with ‘no legally required training or registration’ needed. While there are eight lists of


competent assessors – five backed by the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) – the law still ‘does not require assessors to have their name on any of these lists’. Inside Housing noted that this has ‘been a source of concern for many years’ and its research found that, of 128 local authorities, only 26 said all assessors used were registered, while 23 ‘used a mix’, and another 23 used ‘exclusively’ unregistered assessors. The remaining 56 ‘did not even


know whether the professionals they had used were registered’, and ‘while there is no guarantee that an unregistered assessor will be worse’, registration offers a ‘third-party seal of approval that the qualifications possessed are relevant, appropriate and up to date’. Despite it being legal to use unregistered assessors, it ‘goes against’ guidance in the FSO. UK fire safety organisations


formed the Fire Risk Assessment Competency Council (FRACC) in 2014, issuing guidance on choosing competent assessors and producing registers. Dennis Davis of the Fire Sector Federation (FSF)


clear recommendation’ in FRACC guidance not to use them. Councils and organisations that said no assessors used since 2010 were registered include: Barking and Dagenham; Birmingham; Bournemouth; Bristol; Central Bedfordshire; Charnwood; Exeter; Gateshead; Great Yarmouth; Hinckley & Bosworth; Northampton Partnership Homes; Portsmouth; Rotherham; Sandwell; South Oxfordshire; Southend; Star Housing; Sunderland; Tandridge; Vale of White Horse; Warwick; Welwyn Hatfield; and Wirral. Mr Davis added: ‘Our view, and


and author of the FRACC guidance, said: ‘We [were] suggesting that was a useful, practical way of approaching fire risk assessments: to ensure at least that you were finding someone who was competent at doing that task.’ Continuing, Mr Davis said that


nevertheless, ‘it has been known for some time that not everyone was doing this’, and Jonathan O’Neill, managing director of the FPA, commented: ‘Without any third- party assessment, virtually anyone can set themselves up and call themselves a fire risk assessor. There is no real requirement to have any insurance, to have anyone give you accreditation whatsoever. ‘It’s quite a complicated business,


particularly the high-risk stuff. Even people who have been in our organisation for some time, if they’re going into fire risk assessment, it’s probably two years since the start of training before we’ll let them out on their own. If you get it wrong, it’s people’s lives you’re playing with.’ According to Mr Davis, the FSF position is ‘that it should be a statutory requirement that you have someone who’s shown to be competent and that means, really, a demonstration of competence. In our view, it would be someone who has third-party accreditation’. Some councils argue that unregistered assessors are used on ‘lower- risk homes’, but while there is no legal requirement, ‘there is a


I’m talking from a federation point of view, is that everyone who’s doing this work should be competent and you’ve therefore got to be able to demonstrate that competence. Our view would be: go and look at someone who is at least registered with an accreditation organisation, because then you know you’re dealing with someone who has been audited and has some capability and quality to them.’ Mr O’Neill commented: ‘It’s


our view that any high-risk risk assessment should be done by a third-party accredited assessor. In fact, we’ve been pushing in the changes in the Hackitt Review implementation time that all fire risk assessors need to be third- party accredited. As an absolute minimum, all high-risk fire risk assessments should be done by an independent, third-party accredited fire risk assessor. It’s crazy, to be honest, that they’re not.’ Some of the 23 stated that in- house assessors had received FPA FRA training, to which Mr O’Neill added: ‘That on its own certainly shouldn’t qualify you for high-risk premises. It’s absolutely vital that a fire risk assessment is comprehensive and considers things from all angles, particularly where life safety is involved. ‘We certainly wouldn’t be telling people that they should be going out and setting up fire risk assessment consultancies just because they’ve done a training course with the FPA.’


www.frmjournal.com MARCH 2019 13


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