Fire safety can be a minefield for landlords and building managers, especially when you have about a million other things on your plate, like:
- Maintenance and repairs
- Overall compliance
- Property inspections
- Managing budgets and expenditure
- And more…
As such, staying on top of fire safety can feel like an arduous additional responsibility—but it doesn’t need to be.
By following these simple steps and working alongside a fire safety expert, you’ll:
- Save yourself a lot of hassle further down the line.
- Better protect your building’s occupants.
- Keep everybody abreast of important fire safety information.
- Avoid potentially being prosecuted for noncompliance.
Alex MacArthur, director at North West Fire Solutions, provides his top five fire safety tips for private landlords and building managers.
1. Have the correct policies and procedures in place
If you’re responsible for a building, you need to think about how you’re managing your fire safety proactively to avoid fires in the first place.
You also have to think about what could happen if there was a fire. There’s more to it than simply getting people out of the building.
You need to establish who’s responsible for getting out of the building, who’s going to call the fire service, and who’s going to greet the fire service. For larger sites, you may need to think about how you would manage communication with the fire service on arrival so they know:
- Where the fire is
- If there are any access issues
- How you can communicate with them throughout the incident
When we carry out fire risk assessments, we find that people are lacking when it comes to having these kinds of policies and procedures in place.
Let’s use an apartment block as an example. One issue that many apartment block owners overlook but should seriously consider is how to handle electric vehicles and their charging stations.
If your apartment block contains a multi-storey car park, you may want to have a policy that stipulates electric vehicles can’t charge there, and residents need to find another location in which to park and charge their cars.
This would be an overall policy, but then, of course, you would need some kind of procedure in place to go with it if people wanted to install their own chargers.
In this scenario, a separate fire risk assessment would potentially need to be carried out, and you’d need to take the installation and ongoing maintenance of such equipment into consideration.
More generally, you should have policies in place that outline:
- Training protocols
- Who’s responsible for maintenance
- Who’s the overall responsible person for the premises
- Any kind of assistance that supports the overall responsible person
- Any contractors you use
By documenting this information, you’re demonstrating that you’ve exercised due diligence and taken all necessary precautions beforehand.
We’ve found from first-hand experience that a lot of responsible persons haven’t documented this information, or if they have, it’s minimal. However, a lot of thought needs to go into creating these policies and procedures.
There’s no set schedule for reviewing them, but every 12 months is a good place to start.
If something changes within your building—for example, if it’s a workplace and a new member of staff has a disability or mobility issue—this is an opportune moment in which to review your existing policies and procedures and any additional measures you may need to put in place.
Again, doing this will indicate that you’ve tried to make the building and its occupants completely safe from fire should the worst happen.
2. Know your buildings
One thing we see quite regularly—particularly amongst owners of, and those responsible for, larger buildings—is a gap in knowledge about the fire safety requirements for their premises.
Building plans are a good example of this. Although the general consensus is that detailed plans exist for residential blocks or office space and the records are there, in reality, that’s not the case.
Often, when we’re asked to carry out surveys, whether it’s a strategy or compartmentation survey or a simple risk assessment, we’ll ask for such information, and usually the client is unable to provide it.
Or, if they can provide it, the plans can be very crude and not suitable for the types of surveys we need to carry out.
You need to know:
- How your building has been built, and with what materials
- When it was built
- That the building plans are accurate
- That you have decent maintenance contracts in place
… and more.
If you collate this information and act upon it so that everything’s up to date, you can then make an informed decision in the event of legislation changes, a fire, or general changes to your building.
It could be something as basic as changing a fire door or having a fire door survey carried out. In these scenarios, we’ll ask questions like, ‘Have you got the history of the doors?’ and ‘Do you know the specification of your doors?’ The answers to these questions determine whether they pass or fail, and, all too often, the required information is just not there.
Over time, private landlords, building managers, and anybody who’s responsible for the building need to ensure they’re collating all the necessary information.
Even if you manage a small flat, small shop, or HMO, understanding the ins and outs of your premises is so important for effective fire safety management.
These can be simple things like:
- What type of alarm have you got?
- What type of extinguishers have you got?
- Do you know how to use these extinguishers?
Knowing the answers to these questions is so important, and we find the best buildings are those where the responsible persons are on top of this.
They can answer any questions when asked, and ultimately, it keeps people safe when those responsible know what they’re doing with their building.
3. Communicate with others
This point ties in with the upshot of the Grenfell Tower inquiry.
One of the key takeaways from this inquiry was that there was more than one responsible person for that particular premises, and they really should have shared any important information that they found, but this didn’t happen.
This revelation needed to come out, as it reemphasises the need for responsible persons to communicate better.
There are lots of buildings that may have multiple responsible persons. In serviced office accommodation, every tenant is responsible for their own demise, and the landlord is responsible for communal areas.
The findings that somebody has for their own demise need to be shared with the relevant people.
If you’re in, let’s say, a warehouse, you may not know what a neighbouring tenant is up to in their unit. You could be safe and take the necessary precautions, but on the other side of the wall, dangerous activities may be taking place.
So, it’s important everybody owns their individual responsibility, carries out their own surveys where they need to, and shares the findings accordingly. At the end of the day, this is a legal responsibility.
Landlords who have tenants must be up to date with fire safety, remain compliant, and share their findings, and all of these points should be stipulated in tenancy agreements. If they don’t do that, they’re breaking the terms of the lease as well as the law.
We’ve encountered many instances in which we’re looking to gain access and communicate with all residents in big blocks of flats. Building managers are best placed to assist with this, as they have multiple contact points with the leaseholders and mechanisms in place whereby they can reach out to everyone at once, whether this is through emails or text messages.
They must have those lines of communication in place to maintain effective communication, as effective fire safety management is only possible if everybody does their bit.
4. Keep up to date with the relevant legislation and guidance
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the main piece of fire safety legislation in this country.
It came into force on October 1, 2006, which is nearly 20 years ago, and yet there are still lots of landlords and building managers out there who’ve never looked at it and aren’t up to speed with it. This is concerning when you consider that these people are responsible for ensuring everyone’s safety within their premises.
We get it—people aren’t going to browse the government website every two minutes reading up on fire safety laws. But if you’re responsible for a building in any way, shape or form, it’s worth reading The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, as this is the main piece of legislation that everybody must follow.
It was updated in 2021 and 2022, and there are plenty of resources from the UK government that can guide you through these updates.
You can easily access these resources via Google, and they’re excellent. They’re very well-written and make it clear to people what they need to do and how the legislation affects them.
5. Stay compliant
This is an obvious final point, but I can’t stress enough how important it is.
If you’re not following the law and ticking all the boxes, this can have serious consequences.
If the worst were to happen and a fire broke out at your premises, but you couldn’t demonstrate that you’ve followed the letter of the law and done your best to keep your building’s occupants safe, then unfortunately, it wouldn’t look good for you.
One of the biggest ways in which you can remain compliant is by having an up-to-date fire risk assessment in place, and getting one is easy. Lots of companies out there, like us, can provide this assessment. All you need to do is pick up the phone or send an email asking for someone to attend your site.
Even if you think your building is one of the worst in the world for fire safety management, you’re compliant as long as you get a fire risk assessment done.
You can be prosecuted even if a fire doesn’t occur within your building. The fire service has enforcement teams that will attend your premises, and if you can’t prove to them that you have a fire risk assessment in place, you can be prosecuted.
So, the consequences of noncompliance can be serious, but they can be easily avoided if you take decisive action.
Don’t leave your building unprepared for fire
We’ve been going for 15 years at the time of publication and have risk-assessed many different types of business premises across the UK—and even other offices in our own building.
Fire risk assessments are our bread and butter, and our qualified consultants have experience in all walks of life when it comes to fire safety.
There’s not much we’ve not faced, which means you’ll get a good, thorough fire risk assessment from us.
You’ll also receive comprehensive fire safety training should you require it. We’ll ask you questions you may not have heard before, and you’ll get far more out of this training than you will from watching a few online videos.
Whichever of our services you require, feel free to reach out to us at 0151 665 0124 or email info@nwfiresolutions.co.uk.