The law changed in 2006 meaning fire risk assessments must now be regularly performed by all UK businesses with premises as a legal requirement. Employers must now inspect for the risk of fire in the workplace and apply fire precautions to identified fire hazards. This important change puts full responsibility of fire safety onto the employers and with local fire authorities reviewing business premises are complying with the new legislation. If you're worried about this then this would usually involve viewing a copy of your latest fire risk assessment.

There is already legislation in place stating businesses must perform risk assessments in general and a fire risk assessment follows the same principles. There is a few options to go with when it concerns an assessment but to perform one yourself you must follow the recommended procedure. The main purpose of an assessment is to ensure all fire hazards on your premises are identified and steps are put in place to reduce these hazards and prevent them from causing fires.

The law doesn't state that you must have training or qualifications in fire safety to carry out an assessment, just that an assessment should be performed by a competent individual. It is fine for you to perform your own assessment as long as you have some basic knowledge of fire safety, a relatively simple premises and some general common sense. I would not recommend that you carry out your own assessment if your premises is large or complex as you would need more knowledge of fire safety requirements.

It is perfectly normal for businesses to undertake their own fire risk assessments if their workplace is small or an office environment. An assessment procedure is very simple consisting of five simple steps. The steps involve the identification of fire hazards and people who may be at risk, assessing these risks, then recording your findings. The final step is to maintain your fire safety and review the assessment on a regular basis.

Obviously this is a brief statement of each step and that there is more to each process. There is lots of free advice and help online to explain the procedure more. The main importance of of assessment is that you act on the identified hazards of the assessment. This is particularly the case if severe hazards or high chances of a fire happening are found, urgent attention is needed to ensure the fire risk is contained and prevented. Amongst recording all findings of an assessment by law you must inform your staff of any findings. You must also train all employees in fire safety, fire fighting equipment and actions that must be taken in an emergency.