BAFE Fire Risk Assessment

You will need to comply with fire safety law if you own, manage or operate a building or business. If you want to do more research on this, the main law in relation to Fire Safety is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, more commonly known as the RRO.

The RRO applies to virtually all non-domestic buildings and it is your responsibility to make sure the workplace meets the required standards. If you read Article 9 of the RRO, it states that suitable and sufficient Fire Risk Assessments must be carried out by a competent person.

Yes, you can perform your own fire risk assessment however the law states that the assessment must be ‘suitable and sufficient’. This means that it must be carried out by a competent person – somebody with sufficient training, qualifications and experience. The advantages therefore of using external fire safety consultants are numerous:

• Knowledge of the latest fire regulations and legislation

• Competent person

• Saving time and money

• Reduce risk of prosecution if something is missed by doing it yourself

• Guaranteed provision of a suitable and sufficient assessment

• Responsibility for the provision of a compliant assessment lies with the external consultancy

RM are based in the West Midlands but our fire risk assessors work nationwide. The majority of our Fire Risk Assessment work is in London, Birmingham and Manchester however we look after our clients’ properties all over the UK, including the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland.

Our Fire Risk Assessments start from just £250.00, depending on the size and location of your building. Following on from our assessments, we provide an after-care service to clients that offers ongoing advice and we attend meeting where necessary.

Fire Risk Assessments should become subject to regular review. For this reason, we recommend that all fire risk assessments are reviewed annually and this has now become best practice within the industry. You should also review your assessment following any significant change to the property. Most commonly, these significant changes are in relation to layout, staff, occupancy, activities and legislation etc.

Having said this, the majority of our clients’ properties are assessed once a year.

As part of our fire risk assessment, we may recommend that other surveys such as fire door survey or fire stopping survey are undertaken. RM also provide these services so that you can tick all of your fire safety service boxes under the same roof.