Employers are liable if Fire Safety Tasks to non Trained Employees

With all the hoo ha going on with the election, you may have missed that a new regulation being quietly introduced by the now previous government relating to fire safety.

Fire Safety Regulations 2010

The Fire Safety (Employees’ Capabilities) (England) Regulations 2010 was slipped into law on 6 April 2010 to plug a gap in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (or FSO – the main fire legislation) after realising that when the FSO was written they missed out a piece that was required by Europe.

The new regulation has only one requirement: that employers delegating fire safety tasks take into account the fire safety capabilities of employees (this was already implied but is now made an explicit requirement.

In other words, if you give important fire safety jobs and responsibilities to staff who are not competent, you will probably be in breach of the law.

This means if you fail to train staff appropriately in their roles, enforcement action, in the form of notices and even prosecution and fines, is a real possibility.

Therefore, if you delegate staff to do fire risk assessments, weekly fire alarm tests, monthly emergency lighting tests, fire safety equipment checks, or Fire Warden duties, etc, you need to ensure they have the right skills, knowledge and experience to do it properly, what to do if there is a problem and be satisfied that they are capable and competent for the task depending on complexity.

This is a good time to ensure risk assessments, standards, training and supervision are appropriate, up-to-date and the provisions of your health and safety policy are being applied in practice.

For help and advice on staff training needs, please contact Firecrest on 0800 783 05 88 or send us an email and we will contact you.

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