Blog Posts

You have to routinely inspect and maintain the equipment to ensure that it will function correctly in an emergency. These requirements are set out in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

The hard truth is that most fire alarm and detection systems do not actually cause the false alarms – it is much more likely that it is due to mismanagement, lack of training and an absence of responsibility and procedures.

So, what do you need to know and consider in relation to false fire alarms?

Fire risk assessments and awareness training are an important part of any business. They ensure that employees are educated as to the hazards and fire risks within a workplace. They educate staff in ways to reduce these risks, how to act in the event of a fire, and how to identify people that are most at risk in a fire situation.

Throughout your everyday life, you will walk through a number of fire doors - at work, in public buildings, shops etc. If you look closely, you’ll notice that a vast majority of these doors are labelled ‘Keep shut”.

But why are fire doors meant to be kept closed? It might make sense to assume that in the event of a fire, having doors open allows a more effective evacuation route for people inside the building.

Whilst checks and visual inspections can be easily carried out by the responsible person when trained and familiar with how to do it, annual services require more in-depth knowledge and expertise in order to do so safely and correctly.

Because of this, most businesses will rely on an external service provider to maintain their fire extinguishers. However, with the relatively loose definition of the term ‘competent person’ in the eyes of the law, theoretically anyone with a small amount of knowledge can legally call themselves a ‘fire extinguisher technician’.

The risk of fire within a workplace is one that needs to be constantly assessed and managed. One of the most effective ways of reducing the risk of fire is to educate staff and promote fire safety awareness.

In this article, we’ll look at how the ‘responsible person’ and business owners can effectively and efficiently educate their employees to reduce the risk of workplace fires and potential injuries. The aim of this article is to cause employees to be aware of risks and even carry out their own small fire risk assessments during the working day. This, needless to say, is not a replacement for official fire risk assessments but does cause employees to stop and think about everyday fire risks.

In 2020 20% of house fires in the UK were shown to have started at a cooking appliance*.

This highlights the importance of having fire safety equipment in your kitchen to stop small fires from spreading.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and the more recent British Standard BS5306 8:2012, strict rules have been established to ensure that fire fighting equipment is always where it’s meant to be and always easy to find.

The British Standard BS5306 Part 8:2012 states that extinguishers should be mounted with the handle a specific distance from the ground depending on the overall weight of the extinguisher. This often causes people to believe that this is the only way they can be stored. However, there is another option...

You may have heard the term PAT testing thrown around the workplace occasionally, but what is it? Why is it important and what does it have to do with fire safety?

When you think about the measures and protocols that are put in place to protect a building and inhabitants, you would be forgiven for thinking it’s just water sprinklers and alarm systems. After all, these are the fire protection systems that are the most obvious. Sprinkler systems are the systems that get shown in films and TV every day and Fire Alarms often make noisy appearances in our everyday lives.

But there's more to fire protection systems than simply fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems.