Choosing a Fire Risk Assessor: The London Fire Brigade have produced a Guide to Choosing a Competent Fire Risk Assessor. It is recommended that only fire risk assessment companies, including sole traders, which are third party certificated to appropriate schemes operated by Certification Bodies which have been UKAS accredited to certificate against such schemes are used.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 came into force on 23 January 2023. The Regulations, made under article 24 of the Fire Safety Order, impose new duties on responsible persons with regard to the areas brought within the Fire Safety Order by the Fire Safety Act. The Fire Safety Act clarified the scope of the Fire Safety Order to make clear it applies to the structure, external walls (including cladding and balconies) and individual flat entrance doors between domestic premises and the common parts.
In all multi-occupied residential buildings, responsible persons must:
- provide residents with relevant fire safety instructions and information about the importance of fire doors
What are relevant fire safety instructions and information about the importance of fire doors?
Information to residents
You must display fire safety instructions in a conspicuous part of the building. The instructions must be in a comprehensible form that residents can reasonably be expected to understand.
The instructions must cover the following matters:
• the evacuation strategy for the building (e.g. stay put or simultaneous evacuation)
• instructions on how to report a fire (e.g. use of 999 or 112, the correct address to give to the fire and rescue service, etc.)
• any other instruction that tells residents what they must do when a fire has occurred.
These instructions must also be provided directly to new residents as soon as reasonably practicable after they move into their accommodation, as should also be the case if there are any material changes to the instructions (e.g. as a result of alterations to the building). In addition, these instructions should be reissued to all existing residents at periods not exceeding 12 months.
You must also provide relevant information about fire doors, particularly residents’ flat entrance doors, as these play an important part in containing any fire within the flat in which it starts. In particular, you must provide information to all residents to the effect that:
• fire doors should be shut when not in use
• residents or their guests should not tamper with self-closing devices on fire doors
• residents should report any fault with, or damage to, fire doors immediately to the Responsible Person Again, the information about fire doors must be provided to residents as soon as reasonably practicable after they move into their flat and at periods not exceeding 12 months thereafter.
For multi-occupied residential buildings over 11 metres in height, responsible persons must:
- undertake quarterly checks on all communal fire doors and annual checks on flat entrance doors
Is my building over 11 metres in height?
Measuring height:
For high-rise residential buildings (a multi-occupied residential building at least 18 metres in height or 7 or more storeys), responsible persons must:
- share electronically with their local fire and rescue service (FRS) information about the building’s external wall system and provide the FRS with electronic copies of floor plans and building plans for the building
- keep hard copies of the building’s floor plans, in addition to a single page orientation plan of the building, and the name and UK contact details of the responsible person in a secure information box which is accessible by firefighters
- install wayfinding signage in all high-rise buildings which is visible in low light conditions
- establish a minimum of monthly checks on lifts which are for the use of firefighters in high-rise residential buildings and on essential pieces of firefighting equipment
- inform the FRS if a lift used by firefighters or one of the pieces of firefighting equipment is out of order for longer than 24 hours
Is my building a high-rise residential building?
For the purpose of the Regulations, a residential building is to be considered as high-rise if either of the following circumstances apply:
- the building is at least 18 metres above ground level, measured from the lowest ground level adjoining the outside of the building to the height of the floor in the top storey (ignoring any top storey that contains only plant or machinery); or
- the building is seven storeys or more, excluding any storeys below ground level.
A mezzanine floor is to be treated as a storey if its floor area is at least 50% of the floor area of the largest storey in the building which is not below ground level.