Fire safety & the law
The law behind nearly every commercial building, stripped of the legal language down to the single idea it is built on.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the law that governs fire safety in almost every commercial building in England and Wales, and it is written in the dense style of legislation that few business owners ever read. Stripped of the legal language, though, it is built on a single, sensible idea, and understanding that idea is enough to grasp what the law actually asks of you.
Before 2005, fire safety in the UK was a patchwork of more than seventy separate pieces of law, and premises were controlled through fire certificates issued by the authorities. The Fire Safety Order, which came into force in October 2006, swept that away and replaced it with a single, unified duty based on risk. Instead of the state inspecting a building and issuing a certificate, the responsibility shifted onto the people who run the building to assess their own fire risk and manage it. It applies to essentially all non domestic premises, workplaces, shops, restaurants, hotels, and the common parts of buildings containing two or more homes. If you are not living in a single private dwelling, the Order almost certainly applies to the premises you occupy or control.
What the law actually requires
At its heart the Order asks the responsible person to do a short list of connected things. Carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment that identifies the hazards and the people at risk. Take steps to remove or reduce that risk so far as is reasonably practicable. Put in place and maintain appropriate general fire precautions, the alarms, escape routes, emergency lighting, extinguishers and signage that let people get out safely. Prepare an emergency plan and make sure staff are informed and trained. And keep the whole thing under review so it stays current. Where five or more people are employed, the significant findings of the assessment must be recorded in writing, though in practice almost every business should record them.
A crucial feature of the Order is that it is risk based rather than prescriptive. It does not hand you a rigid checklist that is identical for a corner shop and a chemical works; it asks you to identify the real hazards of your particular premises and respond to them proportionately. That flexibility is the whole point, but it cuts both ways: it means you cannot discharge the duty by ticking generic boxes, and a serious hazard specific to your building, such as a grease laden kitchen extract system running through the structure, has to be identified and addressed because it is a real risk, not because a list mentioned it.
The Order has been strengthened since it was made. The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed that a building structure, external walls and flat entrance doors fall within its scope, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 together with section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 added further duties for responsible persons, much of it a response to the Grenfell Tower fire. The direction of travel is consistently toward more scrutiny of competence, documentation and ongoing management, not less.
Who carries the duty
All of these duties attach to a specific role the Order creates: the responsible person. In a workplace that is normally the employer; in other premises it is whoever has control of the building in connection with a business. It is the responsible person who must ensure the assessment is done, the precautions are maintained and the risk is managed, and who answers to the enforcing authority if it is not. In shared and multi occupied buildings there can be several responsible persons with overlapping duties, which is a frequent source of confusion, so it is worth being clear about exactly who is the responsible person under fire safety law for your premises before assuming someone else holds the duty.
Living with the Order
Complying with the Fire Safety Order is less about reading the statute than about running a simple, continuous loop: assess the risk, reduce it, maintain the precautions, keep the assessment current, and repeat. The enforcing authorities can inspect at any time, ask to see the assessment, and act on what they find, with penalties for serious breaches running to unlimited fines and imprisonment, so this is not a duty to treat lightly. Keeping the assessment alive is central, which is why understanding how often a fire risk assessment should be reviewed matters as much as doing it once. Understand the single idea behind the Order, know that you are the responsible person, and act on the specific risks of your own building, and the intimidating legal text becomes a manageable, ordinary part of running the premises.
Questions
It is the main fire safety law for non domestic premises in England and Wales, in force since October 2006. It replaced more than seventy older laws and the fire certificate system with a single duty on the responsible person to assess and manage fire risk.
It applies to essentially all non domestic premises, including workplaces, shops, restaurants, hotels and the common parts of buildings with two or more homes. If the premises are not a single private dwelling, the Order almost certainly applies.
Carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, reduce the risk so far as reasonably practicable, provide and maintain general fire precautions, prepare an emergency plan, train staff, and keep the assessment under review. Record the findings if you employ five or more people.
Breaches are criminal offences. Serious failures can lead to unlimited fines and up to two years in prison, as well as prohibition or enforcement notices, and can invalidate insurance after a fire.
Yes. The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed structure, external walls and flat entrance doors are within scope, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 added further duties, largely following the Grenfell Tower fire.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
The Order makes you manage real hazards, and a greasy extract is one of them. Talk to Phoenix about cleaning and documenting your ductwork to evidence the duty.