01 February 2006
Louis Wustemann

Last month, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) announced the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (RRO), which was due to become law in England and Wales in April, would be delayed till later in the year, giving businesses more time to prepare.

The breathing space will probably be welcome to tens of thousands of people responsible for fire safety at commercial sites who will take on comprehensive legal duties to assess and manage fire risks under the new regime.

What is the RRO intended to achieve? In the words of the explanatory notes to the original draft order: "The aim of the proposed reform is to reduce burdens on business that are caused by the existence of multiple, overlapping general fire safety regimes - and consequently, overlap of the responsibilities of enforcing authorities. The proposed order would consolidate and rationalise much existing fire safety legislation (currently scattered across a large number of statutes and secondary legislation) into one order. In doing so it would reduce the number of enforcing authorities dealing with general fire safety matters."

The order will supersede a host of pieces of previous legislation (estimates vary, but some say as many as 140) covering fire safety.

The two most significant are the Fire Precautions Act 1971 which introduced the requirement for fire certificates and the Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations 1997 (as amended), which require a fire risk assessment of business premises and removal or reduction of the risks identified. The full text of the new order is available at  www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051541.htm.

The headline change of the new regime is that under the RRO, workplaces will no longer have (or be able) to gain fire certificates and employers will be responsible for managing their own risk assessments.

Risk assessment

For anyone who has assessed their premises under the 1997 Regulations, the assessment requirements of the RRO should not be a big extra burden.

The main change is that the definition of people whose safety must be considered in the risk assessment has been extended beyond the existing categories of employees and people working in the area (including contractors, visitors and members of the public) to take in "all relevant persons", which includes passers by and firefighters tackling any blaze.

The assessment must also take into account property safety and the effect any fire could have on the environment around the premises.

As with existing fire risk assessments, the RRO requires the assessment to be written down only if there are more than five people working on the premises.

The risk assessment must be kept up to date and reviewed whenever there are any changes that might alter the level of risk. These could be material changes to the premises (whether it is building work or even alterations to the internal layout that affect the escape distances) or to the type of work carried out there.

The RRO will be supported by 11 guidance documents that will be building-type specific (including ones covering shops and offices, factories and warehouses, educational premises and hospitals) and these will advise employers and building owners  on how to carry out risk assessments for their particular type and size of building.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is preparing these guides on behalf of the ODPM, and they are expected to be available in time for the start of the new regime, priced £11 each. (The delay in completing the guides is believed to be one reason the introduction of the RRO has been postponed.)

For small premises with no major fire risks, such as offices, these guides should be enough to inform risk assessment by a non specialist. (A free online checklist to support risk assessment for small and medium-sized businesses is also available from the Fire Protection Association (FPA) at www.fpa-fireriskassessment.com/checklist.htm)

Larger businesses (and those with higher risks) are likely have their own certified fire risk assessors or to contract out their risk assessments to third parties such as safety consultants. In such cases, the RRO says they have to use a "competent person" (see below).

Responsible people

Whoever carries out the risk assessment, the ultimate responsibility for creating it, maintaining it and removing or controlling any risks it identifies, lies with what the order refers to as the "responsible person". This person is the employer in most workplaces, or the person in overall charge of the building, or, failing that, the owner.

The RRO says the responsible person's duties are to: "take such general fire precautions as will ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of any of his employees; and in relation to relevant persons who are not his employees, take such general fire precautions as may reasonably be required in the circumstances of the case to ensure that the premises are safe."

In practice, this means they must ensure:

• the risk assessment is up to date
• any risks highlighted in it are removed where possible (replacing high-risk substances with low-risk ones, for example) or adequate controls are put in place
• there is appropriate fire detection and control equipment (such as alarms and extinguishers) on the premises
• staff are adequately trained in fire safety procedures.

Competent people

The RRO says the responsible person "must appoint one or more competent persons" to help them carry out the preventive and protective measures required by the order.

Under the RRO, a person is judged competent where they have "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable them properly to assist in undertaking the preventive and protective measures". For small businesses, if the responsible person has read the relevant guidance and done their own risk assessment and comes up with no special risk, they are probably competent (for the purposes of the order) to take the relevant actions.

Larger businesses, and those with higher risks, are likely to employ trained fire safety officers or to contract consultants. In the absence of detailed guidance on what constitutes competence, organisations are best advised to put their nominated competent persons through accredited courses such as the NEBOSH (National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health) Certificate in Fire Safety and Risk Management, or to check that outside consultants are suitably qualified. The Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) is building a register of third-party competent suppliers which is available at www.ife.org.uk/frr/.

Two-year stretch

The responsible person at any site really needs to be confident they are meeting the RRO's requirements and that anyone else they rely on is truly competent, because their liberty could be at risk otherwise. Both the responsible person and the competent person can be held liable for any failure to comply with the order, and the maximum penalty is two years in prison.

For commercial buildings, the main enforcing bodies for the order's provisions will be  local fire and rescue authorities. As one of the stated aims of the RRO is to allow authorities to target resources more effectively at high-risk areas, it seems likely that the fire authorities will be focusing inspection effort on the businesses whose processes or raw materials pose the greatest fire risks.

For offices, the regime is likely to be enforced retrospectively. So a fire authority investigating a fire in low-risk premises will want to see that the risk assessment was complete and up to date, and that any special risks had been removed or controlled, and will consider prosecution where the employer cannot show they complied with the order.

Thanks to the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (www.asfp.org.uk) for its help in preparing this article.

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