The responsibility of ensuring the safety of the occupants and the buildings falls to you as a property owner, landlord, or manager. However, what can you do to ensure this?

In addition to structural integrity, fortification against burglars, or water damage, there are many aspects of safety that need to be considered. However, we will focus on fire safety here. A fire risk assessment can help you protect your tenants from potential fire hazards, and you should do so as a legal and moral obligation.

The Importance of Fire Risk Assessments

During a fire risk assessment, an experienced fire risk assessor conducts a methodical inspection of the building to determine the likelihood of fire hazards and to recommend appropriate mitigation measures.

Unless you conduct an adequate in-depth fire risk assessment, ensuring fire safety in your living or working space becomes a speculative exercise without any assurance of safety.

Fire risk assessments assist you in conceptualizing a system that will help you deal with fires effectively, and protect lives and property in the event of a fire.

Why Fire Risk Assessment Is a Legal Requirement

England and Wales used to have a statute called the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order (RRO) that governed fire safety in buildings before 2021. Individuals who manage buildings are required to conduct risk assessments to identify fire hazards and implement mitigation measures in order to minimize them.

Following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the RRO has been amended by the Fire Safety Act 2021 to clarify the areas of occupied residential buildings to which the Regulatory Reform Order applies. These include external walls, windows, balconies, cladding and insulation, as well as shared entrance doors.

Navigating Fire Risk Assessment

In any fire risk assessment, there are two essential aspects:

The first section entails the review, which analyses the premises for fire safety weak points. Part two, on the other hand, must contain a list of requirements that must be acted upon for a building to be compliant with fire safety regulations. This may include recommendations for installing alarms, exit signage, or fire escapes where they are absent. Furthermore, the fire risk assessment should be reviewed regularly within a period no longer than five years. However, within this period, a new risk assessment is required if:

Conclusion

Delineating the legal necessity of fire risk assessment has been the purpose of this article. Hopefully, now the legal importance of fire risk assessment is no longer lost on you. Suppose you require fire risk assessments Croydon professionals to assess your building for fire safety weak links and make recommendations to rectify such. In that case, GF Fire Solutions is the leading fire risk assessor serving London and surrounding areas.