Do you own a restaurant, fast food outlet or takeaway?
If yes, Fire Safety Law applies to you and you must take action.
How to avoid the onset of fire:
This leaflet has been designed to alert businesses to the importance and benefits of regularly carrying out a fire safety assessment.
Protecting your business and the people within it from the danger of a fire is a must.
Does anyone sleep above the business?
Fire safety is especially important where people may be asleep in rooms or flats above a business and their access is by a single, open or unprotected staircase from the main public or kitchen area.
The floor plan below shows a dangerous layout:
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 means you are responsible for taking steps to protect the people using your premises from the risk of fire. If necessary, you must improve your fire safety measures/construction to ensure all exit routes are safe.
Follow the 5 key steps:
- Identify the hazards
- Identify people at risk
- Remove, reduce or protect from risk
- Record, plan, inform, instruct and train
- Review
Top tip
Keeping a record will save you time and money when you come to review and update your assessment. If you employ five or more people (including any who work part time), the law says you must keep a written record of significant findings.
What is a fire risk assessment?
A fire risk assessment is a thorough look at your premises and the people who are likely to use them. It considers the risk of fire breaking out and what measures you need to put in place to prevent it and keep people safe.
What must I do?
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 means you are responsible for taking steps to protect the people using your premises from the risk of fire.
If necessary, you must improve your fire safety measures.
Top tip 1: Get out, stay out and wait for the fire service
Top tip 2: Plan an escape route
Protecting your business:
- fit an alarm to provide early warning in case of fire
- keep escape routes clear of obstructions and things that can burn
- keep fire exits unlocked
- never wedge open a fire door or remove a door closing device
- enclose staircases with fire resisting construction to ensure all exit routes are safe
What happens if I don’t do a fire risk assessment?
Put simply you are more likely to have a fire and less likely to recover from one. It is also a legal requirement designed to keep everyone, associated with a business, safe from fire.
Did you know the Fire Service may inspect your premises as part of our responsibility to enforce the law?
If we feel you need to improve your fire safety we would first offer advice, but in serious cases we may take formal legal enforcement action and in some cases close your business, until it is safe to open again.
The short time you invest in carrying out a fire risk assessment and making improvements could save the lives of your employees, customers or family members and keep your business open.
Don’t let this happen to you!
A restaurant owner was ordered to pay nearly £20,000 in fines and costs after pleading guilty to six breaches of fire safety legislation.
The Local Magistrates Court fined the owner £3,000 per offence, which was reduced to £2,000 for his guilty plea, and also ordered him to pay full costs of £7,282.
He was unable to pay and served some time in prison.
Any questions? Please call our Fire Engineering Department on: 01429 874109 (during office hours) or email: fireengineering@clevelandfire.gov.uk
