Ask who is responsible for fire safety in a building and you’ll often get a vague answer, the landlord, the facilities company, “head office”. The law is not vague. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, every workplace and non-domestic premises in England and Wales has a responsible person, and that person carries specific, enforceable duties, starting with a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment.
Who is the responsible person?
In a workplace, the responsible person is the employer. In premises that aren’t a workplace, or parts of a building beyond the employer’s control, it’s the person who has control of the premises, typically the owner, landlord or managing agent. In practice, many buildings have more than one responsible person (a landlord for common parts, employers for their demises), and the law now explicitly requires them to co-operate and share information with each other.
Crucially, being the responsible person is not a job title you can decline. If you have control of premises, the duties attach to you whether you know about them or not.
What the fire risk assessment must cover
The fire risk assessment is the foundation of everything else. It must identify fire hazards (ignition sources, fuel, oxygen), identify people at risk, including anyone particularly vulnerable, and evaluate whether existing precautions are adequate: detection and alarms, escape routes, emergency lighting, extinguishers, signage, and the management arrangements that keep them all working. It must then set out what needs to improve, and be reviewed regularly and whenever anything significant changes.
Since the Building Safety Act 2022 amendments took effect (via section 156, from October 2023), the fire risk assessment must be recorded in full, in every case, regardless of how many people you employ. The old five-employee threshold for written records is gone. Responsible persons must also record who carried out the assessment and their competence to do so.
The competence question
That last point is where many organisations are exposed. The law now expects that anyone appointed to carry out or review a fire risk assessment is competent, meaning sufficient training, experience and knowledge. A manager handed a template and an afternoon is unlikely to meet that bar, and if a fire occurs, the quality of the assessment will be examined in detail. Fire and rescue authorities can and do prosecute: penalties range from enforcement and prohibition notices up to unlimited fines and imprisonment for the most serious breaches.
For most low- and medium-risk premises, offices, shops, small industrial units, hospitality venues, it is entirely reasonable for a trained in-house person to carry out the assessment. The key word is trained.
Training for responsible persons
Our online Fire Risk Assessment for the Responsible Person course takes you through the legal framework, the five-step assessment methodology, hazard identification, evaluating precautions, recording findings, and building an action plan, with practical examples throughout. It’s designed for the people who actually hold the duty: business owners, managers, landlords and facilities staff.
If your responsibilities extend to fire doors, a major focus of post-Grenfell enforcement, see our NFAQ-accredited Fire Door Inspection and Fire Door Maintenance qualifications, and our guide to the Building Safety Act 2022 and fire doors.
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