Articles 9, 13 and 17 The corresponding requirement under the FSO is contained in A9, and it can be seen that this is the third most popular charge with 312 convictions, representing 15.8% of all charges. In my cases, this is the second most popular charge, representing 16% of charges, although a consistency can be seen between the official figures and my own. Primarily, A9 deals with the failure to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment or failure to review an existing risk assessment. For me, it is the most fundamental requirement and responsibility under the FSO, as it represents the requirement to carry out and continue a process of minimising risk and keeping people safe – which is the main purpose of the legislation. Fire detection and alarms (A13) and premises maintenance (A17) make up the remainder of the top five charges prosecuted.
Interesting increases Article 27
One point of interest from the government figures is the increase in prosecutions to five under A27 in 2018 to 2019. Surprisingly, there had been only ten prosecutions in 12 years for failing to assist in identifying the responsible person or obstructing a fire officer. Last year’s prosecutions take those figures to 15, which is still surprisingly low, as I am acutely aware of the difficulties experienced by fire officers in identifying responsible persons and other persons with control. It is significant that offences under Article 27 are
‘summary only’, and can only be dealt with in the magistrates’ court. This means that all such charges must be commenced within six months of the date of the offence, which is one of the reasons I believe
Year 8 2009-10 17 29 2010-11 24 22 9 3 26
Article Government cases
8 9
13 14 17
Others
321 312 266 464 188 479
Government statistics (%)
15.8 15.4 13.1 22.8 9.3
23.6
Blackhurst Budd case statistics (%)
9.6 16
14.1 32
6.9 21.4
it has been used so infrequently. Most prosecutions take between six to 12 months to prepare, and obviously this would exceed the time limit for the serving of such charges.
Articles 31 and 10 The figure of 43 prosecutions for breaching prohibition notices shows that a relatively large number of responsible persons do not treat the serving of notices under the FSO as seriously as they should. In my experience, A31 breaches are sentenced pretty heavily by the courts. I was also surprised to see 51 prosecutions under A10, or ‘principles of prevention to be applied’ – as this is not an article I use regularly. What can be seen by looking at the figures as a whole is that fire and rescue services have used the very wide ambit of the FSO to bring people to justice, and this would suggest that the FSO as legislation has succeeded in dealing with all manner of fire risk management shortcomings – which was clearly its intention and purpose
Warren Spencer is managing director and fire safety solicitor at Blackhurst Budd Solicitors. For more information, view page 3
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 6
38 10 2 16 8 9 2011-12 28 30 11 13 2012-13 32 25 10 15 2013-14 40 44 2014-15 45 40 2015-16 55 61 2016-17 30 24 2017-18 29 20 2018-19 21 17 5 0 3 1 3 4 15 16 13 5 10 8 2 17 3 34 1 20 3 38 0 18 3 48 0 31 0 17 2 17 42 65 43 49 39 0 2 14 6 2 23 3 1 27 9 3 28 9 0 15 81 11 1 26 54 32 21 6 0 19 3 0 9 3 2 11 5 7 5 4 4 2 3 2 2 4 3 1 1 4 2 0 0 0 2 2 4 9 2 10 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 10 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 2 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 1 Total 321 312 51 113 17 266 464 60 13 188 27 26 12 32 10
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