Fire Risk assessment -
A Step By Step Guide

As the Responsible Person, it is your job to manage the risk of fire at your workplace, and the first step in doing this is to carry out a Fire Risk Assessment. You may well have excellent procedures in place to ensure the safety of your staff and premises, but a Fire Risk Assessment will help to confirm this, and ensure that the systems and precautions you have in place are effective and working properly.

Your Fire Risk Assessment will be the foundation for all your Fire Safety Measures. It is not an end in itself, but a tool to help you identify issues that require attention, and help you plan ahead to protect your staff and your business.

The Purpose of the Fire Risk Assessment is to:

identify possible fire hazards
reduce the risk from these hazards to an acceptable level
identify what action you need to take to ensure the safety of people on your premises if a fire does break out.

I suggest you don't try to rush it - put enough time aside to do the job properly. Producing a Fire Risk Assessment is a logical and systematic process, and you need to go through each step properly for the next one to make sense.

Remember you need to look at all areas of your workplace, including any outside premises you have, rarely used storage areas, cellars, roof voids, etc. If you are responsible for very large or multiple premises, you will probably want to split it into separate chunks.

How To Carry Out The Fire Risk Assessment

There are five steps involved in producing your Fire Risk Assessment - four to actually produce it, and an all-important fifth step which is to Review and Revise the assessment as necessary. These simple steps are set out below - follow the links for full guidance on each step:

Identify The Hazards
Identify the People Who Are At Risk
Evaluate The Risks
are precautions adequate or is further action required?
Record Your Findings
Provide information and training, prepare emergency plans, etc
Review (see comments below)

Fire Risk Assessment Form

Government Guidance advises this five step process, so it is a good idea to follow this format. There is little clear guidance on a system of recording the findings of the Fire Risk Assessment.

I have provided a Fire Risk Assessment Form based on what I use myself, which you are welcome to print off and use, which should cover all the points you need. You will need Adobe Reader to download the form.

You may wish to create your own Fire Risk Assessment Form so that it is more directly relevant to your particular workplace and practices, which is of course absolutely fine, but do ensure you always include the following key elements:

name of your organisation/premises
name of exact location being assessed, if necessary
name of the Assessor
date of the assessment, and the date that it should be reviewed

You could perhaps include an additional space for any additional comments.

Then for the main pages that you will use when you walk around and do your assessment should feature at least six columns to record the following:

details of the fire hazard identified
the people affected by it
existing controls you use to minimise the risk
what further action is required to reduce or remove the hazard
an indication of the urgency of this action (some sort of simple key)
a space for signing when the action is complete

It is probably a good idea to have a space at the bottom of the form for the Assessor to sign and date.

When these stages are complete, you have a Fire Risk Assessment. However, depending what you find during the process will determine whether that is the end of the process for now, or whether you have identified things that need to be done. These might include changes to your fire extinguishers, staff training required, the need to create an emergency plan, etc.

The Act says that you need to appoint one or more 'competent persons' to implement any necessary action brought to light by the assessment. This Competent Person may be yourself, but must have (to quote the Act) "Sufficient training, experience and knowledge" to carry out what you are asking of them. Depending what it is that needs doing, you may wish to consider using Health and Safety Consultants.

And Don't Forget the Fifth Step: REVIEW

What you absolutely must not do is complete the Fire Risk assessment then shove it in a drawer and forget about it. You should review it regularly anyway, I would suggest annually, but you will also need to monitor it to see if the risk management measures you have put in place are working properly.

You could need to amend your Fire Risk Assessment at any time if there are changes to your workplace or work practices. If there are physical changes to the buildings, changes to furniture or storage areas, new materials of chemicals being used, etc.

Basically if anything changes with regard to the work environment or practices, ask yourself whether this changes the potential fire hazard or risk to people. If it does, or could, you need to amend your Fire Risk Assessment to deal with the change.

Fire Risk assessment - A Step By Step Guide