Acting on your Significant Findings

For many years, UK companies have relied on a fire officer to endorse the adequacy of fire safety on their premises with the award of a fire certificate. However, the new legislation which came into force demanded a complete change of approach to managing fire safety in the workplace. This change brought about the Fire Risk Assessment.

A fire risk assessment is a prepared and systematic look at your premises, the activities and the likelihood that a fire could start. It should help you determine the chances of a fire starting and the dangers from fire that your premises could present you with. Yet this is only the beginning of the fire risk assessment process. It is all too often that we hear of organisations carrying out their fire risk assessment (because it is the law) yet leaving them to one side and forgetting about them. This is just not good enough. Identification should not be the end of your fire risk assessment process. The duty to assess risks and take appropriate action is fundamental and absolute. A Fire Risk Assessment is not something to be carried out and left to its own devices. All risk assessments will need acting on.

Once you have identified your significant findings and recorded them you will need to decide how you are going to put these actions in place. As a consultancy providing fire risk assessments we would identify all areas that need considering in your organisation. We will record everything that we see and pass this over to you in a report. This is where the Responsible Person will need to plan to action the significant findings. If, like many business, you find that there are quite a lot of improvements that you could make, big and small, don't try to do everything at once or on your own. Two heads are better than one and three heads are better than two. Don't try and do it all yourself. Start with a plan of action to deal with the most important things first and delegate areas and tasks. Consider your existing precautions and decide if it is high medium or low (at Solutions our reports will identify this for you). Putting the results of your fire risk assessment into practice will make a difference when looking after employees and your business. Inspectors will acknowledge the efforts of businesses that are clearly trying to make improvements.

For further information on creating an action plan or to start the process of your fire risk assessments please do not hesitate to contact us.