Fire Safety in blocks of flats – Hiring an external contractor

As previously discussed on this blog, it is not always a necessity to hire an external contractor to carry out a Fire Risk Assessment on a block of flats. It may be sufficient to nominate a suitably experienced or trained ‘responsible person’ from within your own organisation to follow the processes required for a satisfactory risk assessment. Using an online fire risk assessment tool such as the one at Complete Fire Safety Management can assist in this process.

However, in certain situations it can be necessary to bring in a suitably qualified person from outside to ensure the fire risk assessment is undertaken properly and that the property is fire safe.
The first step in deciding upon which contractor to use should be fairly straightforward. It is important to ensure that he is suitably qualified and has experience specifically with blocks of flats. A reputable company or fire risk assessor will not baulk at being asked to provide proof of qualification or experience.

Additionally, it does not always pay in the long run to simply find the cheapest alternative, it is worth remembering that under the terms of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the hiring of an external contractor does not absolve you of responsibility. You remain responsible under the law for the fire risk assessment as well as the application of any remedy required as a result of the action plan.

In the last blog, we looked at types of fire risk assessment and classified them. In many cases, unless there is a reason to suspect differently, a level one fire risk assessment will be sufficient. This should be what is requested when asking for quotes from an external contractor.

You should prepare all relevant information at your disposal for the fire risk assessor who will need to know everything possible about the building in order to fulfil the risk assessment. This should include information on the occupants (amount and type) and what fire management procedures are already in place.

There will be a certain amount of upheaval involved, this will certainly include arranging access to a sample of the individual flats for the fire risk assessor and may involve hiring an additional building contractor to open up areas of construction for inspection by the fire risk assessor. It may be that the company you hired to undertake the fire risk assessment has in-house contractors they can use, but this is rare.

The results of the fire risk assessment may include recommendations for further investigation of specific parts, for example, to establish if the walls or ceiling are comprised of fire resistant materials (without which the ‘stay put’ policy of evacuation common within blocks of flat is usually impossible).

It is acceptable to ask for the fire risk assessment to follow a certain format if this is important to you, although if you are inexperienced with fire risk assessments, it may be that the contractor’s template will be one which falls into standard layouts, as in PAS 79, for instance. When fire risk assessments are carried out by CFSM, they are entered into the standard format on this website to ensure that amendments can be made in future, as changes occur.

The resulting Action Plan should be clearly laid out with timescales and should be marked as to which are those actions related to current legislation and which are recommendations of good practice. This will help with prioritising the ensuing work.

Next week’s blog will look at the importance of the prevention of fire in your premises and what can be done to prevent fire occurring.

If you have any queries about this week’s blog, fire risk assessments or your own building – whether they are a block of flats or any other business or residential premises, please contact Peter Gyere on 0208 668 8663.

The Complete Fire Safety Management Platform is the only fully comprehensive online fire risk assessment and fire risk management platform. Our aim, at CFSM, is to make the process of becoming fire safe, straightforward, and to use our expertise in fire risk assessment and fire safety management to guide you through each step, resulting in your premises meeting all legal, insurance and ethical fire safety considerations.