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FIRE SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE
Who’s responsible?
You’re responsible for fire safety in business or other non-domestic premises if you’re:
- an employer
- the owner
- the landlord
- an occupier
- anyone else with control of the premises, for example a facilities manager, building manager, managing agent or risk assessor
You’re known as the ‘responsible person’. If there’s more than one responsible person, you have to work together to meet your responsibilities.
The Fire Safety Order also applies if you have paying guests, for example, if you run a bed and breakfast, guesthouse or let a self-catering property.
Fire safety rules are different in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Responsibilities
As the responsible person you must:
- carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly
- tell staff or their representatives about the risks you’ve identified
- put in place, and maintain, appropriate fire safety measures
- plan for an emergency
- provide staff information, fire safety instruction and training
You can read about how to make sure your premises are safe from fire.
Non-domestic premises
Non-domestic premises are:
- all workplaces and commercial premises
- all premises the public have access to
- the common areas of multi-occupied residential buildings
Shared premises
In shared premises it’s likely there’ll be more than one responsible person. You’ll need to co-ordinate your fire safety plans to make sure people on or around the premises are safe.
For common or shared areas, the responsible person is the landlord, freeholder or managing agent.
Alterations, extensions and new buildings
When building new premises or doing building work on existing premises, you must comply with building regulations. This includes designing fire safety into the proposed building or extension.
Read the fire safety building regulations.
Penalties and enforcement
You could be fined or go to prison if you don’t follow fire safety regulations.
Local fire and rescue authorities inspect premises and can issue fire safety notices telling you about changes you need to make.
For more information please visit our fire safety page.
We have also created this guide on the testing of fire safety equipment which we can help you to implement.
