Fire Safety in Blocks of Flats – Renewing and reviewing your Fire Risk Assessment

As our previous blogs have indicated, performing a Fire Risk Assessment on your property is a legal obligation under the terms of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. However, undertaking a single Fire Risk Assessment is not sufficient. It is important to remain within the law by carrying out regular reviews and re-assessments.

Your existing Fire Risk Assessment and Action Plan will only remain viable for as long as there are no changes to any circumstances affecting the block of flats.

As a rule, you should review your Fire Risk Assessment under the following circumstances:

• When a material change or alterations take place
• When a situation changes, such as the demographic of residents within your block
• After the completion of works, which may have taken place as a result of an FRA
• At regular intervals

Therefore, in a nutshell, your Fire Risk Assessment should be a living document. If you have opted to use an online fire risk assessment tool such as the one at Complete Fire Safety Management, your documents are easy to review, maintain and update.

If, for example, you have performed your first full Fire Risk Assessment on your block of flats, have completed the outstanding items in the Action Plan to ensure fire safety within the premises and have updated the Fire Risk Assessment to reflect this, when should you plan your next review or re-assessment for?

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order does not stipulate the re-occurrence schedule and so much of this decision making is left with the building owner or responsible person. A reasonable period of time should be determined as a part of the Fire Risk Assessment, based upon factors such as likelihood of material changes, opportunities to inspect individual flats for material changes which may impact upon the fire safety of the block, etc.

For a low-risk, low-rise block of flats, it is likely that a reasonable period of review would be every two years, with a full Fire Risk Assessment taking place on every other occurrence, i.e. every four years.

A medium/high risk block (one which is more than three storeys, pinpointed as high-risk due to social factors and older buildings) may require a review annually, with a full re-assessment every two years.

A block which has been categorised as very high risk would probably require a full FRA each year.
In those cases where the FRA has been undertaken by qualified fire engineers, it may be that a suitably trained member of your staff can undertake the review of the risk assessment. In those cases where a landlord has opted to use a hybrid service, like the one offered on this website, where a fire engineer carries out the Fire Risk Assessment but the documents are easily reviewable through an online fire risk assessment system, the ‘responsible person’ may be able to perform reviews with a full understanding of the risks involved.

Next week’s blog will discuss how you should approach hiring an outside contractor, i.e. a fire engineering company to perform your Fire Risk Assessment.

If you have any queries about Fire Risk Assessments, the Complete Fire Safety Management System or our online fire risk assessment tool, 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.