Fire protection systems and processes are a legal requirement mandatory to help keep staff safe and to protect the building/premises.
The legal requirements include The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and the Fire Safety Order 2005. As stated on the Government website:
“The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 were laid under article 24 of the Fire Safety Order 2005. Regulations made under article 24 can impose requirements on responsible persons or others, including building owners and building managers, in relation to mitigating the risk to residents for specific premises.
The Fire Safety Order applies to all premises. including workplaces and the common parts of all multi-occupied residential buildings. It already required responsible persons where necessary to take certain steps to ensure the safety of residents.”
Fire Risk Assessments are a way of identifying potential fire hazards and how to reduce their risk. They also help with demonstrating compliance with the above-mentioned fire regulations.
Regular assessments
Once a Fire Risk Assessment has been completed, guidance recommends that they are redone every 3 years but are also reviewed annually. This is because building premises and ways of working can change, and these changes, no matter how small, can have a big impact on fire safety.
Many places still conduct these assessments using a paper checklist that often gets completed once and filed away. The importance of these assessments cannot be emphasised enough. An article in Caring Times (2024) shared that care home owners were hit with a £120k fine for fire safety negligence. This included failures in risk assessment, general fire precautions, fire detection, and maintenance.
By moving your fire risk assessments to a digital platform, you can:
- have an online audit trail of when the assessments were carried out.
- link to your tasking software, tracking what actions were taken and when.
- set-up reminders so you never miss a review to ensure fire safety compliance is always upheld.
What fmfirst® can offer
Our fmfirst® Survey software includes a selection of pre-built templates; this provides fire risk assessments. The application allows for the creation, completion, and validation of a range of surveys/assessments with a selection of scoring options and reports.
The application also comes with a scheduling feature allowing users to select a template and location, set a frequency, and then the system will calculate the survey projections and generate the schedules. The projections are then placed in the calendar, where automatic reminders can be set up to ensure you never miss a review again!
fmfirst® also has a proven track record of integration with 3rd-party applications. This can strengthen your facilities management toolkit.
If you don’t have an FM toolkit in place, then our fmfirst® Tasking application may be the perfect partner for you.
Contact us today to find out more about what our applications can offer.