Octopus helps you stay on top of your property Fire Safety Compliance with regular, detailed assessments, all stored securely in the cloud.
Are you the competent person? Access our online risk assessment tool from just £4.99/month.
If you do not have the time or expertise to carry out a fire risk assessment yourself you will need to appoint a professional.
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Once you have your bespoke assessment either created by yourself (competent person) or a Fire Risk Assessor, you will have access to Octopus, where you can track tasks, upload maintenance information, view quotes and keep on top of your compliance. You will be alerted when tasks are due. All of your compliance requirements managed in one place.
You can do the fire risk assessment yourself with the help of standard fire safety risk assessment guides. If you do not have the expertise or time to do the fire risk assessment yourself you need to appoint a ‘competent person’ to help, for example a professional risk assessor.
‘Competent’ can be defined as somebody with sufficient training, qualifications, experience and attitude. A competent person must have received specific training in relation to fire risk assessments. They must have some form of qualification to back that up, experience in assessing your type of building, and the correct attitude to ensure they’re able to communicate the findings effectively. All of the above can be achieved for your fire risk assessment by using external assessors.
A fire risk assessment is legally required in almost all other types of premises. It is the duty of the ‘Responsible Person’ to take fire precautions ‘as far as reasonably practicable’ under the RRO Part 2 Article 8, to ensure that fire safety is paramount in a premises and that a building is safe for all relevant persons. The ‘Responsible Person’ is defined in the RRO Part 1 Article 3 as:
In Layman’s terms, a ‘Responsible Person’ could be the employer, owner, landlord, or appointed managing agent of the premises. All fire risk assessments must be carried out by a competent person.
Without proper risk assessments, the likelihood of accidents and incidents in your workplace increases. This not only affects the wellbeing of your employees but can also lead to employees needing time off work, increased insurance costs, compensation costs and a loss of productivity. You have a legal duty to assess the risks to the health and safety of your employees (and risks to the health and safety of persons not in your employment) to which they are exposed while they are at work.
There are no specific time periods for how often fire risk assessments must be done or reviewed. UK law states that the responsible person for assessments in your building must review it ‘regularly’ to make sure it’s up to date.
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