Legislation

Since the RRO (Regulatory Reform Order) Fire Safety 2005 came in to force there has be a very slow rise in prosecutions, although I have noticed that recently the Brigade have really started to exercise their powers.

Having spoken to a few fire officers when they were first starting to police the act, it was clear that they were feeling their way in their new roles,  its worth pointing out that the date on the order was not the date that it actually came in to force as with all things of this nature there was a period of grace.

I have subscriptions to the fire industry blogs and news portals and I have noticed that more often there are are stories about various businesses being fined under the above act.

Today I have read about a Pub chain that was fined £15,000 for the lack of a fire risk assessment, I copied the details and the story is below;

Pub company fined £15,000 in fire safety prosecution
12 February 2010

A pub management company has been convicted of offences under fire safety law following a hearing at North Wiltshire Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

Publicana Ltd was fined £15,000 for the offences under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and was ordered to pay the prosecution’s costs.

The offences came to light after Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Service attended an incident at the Little George pub in New Road, Chippenham on 5 October 2008.

After an investigation by officers, charges were brought against Publicana Ltd as the tenants at that time. The company was charged with failing to carry out or record a fire risk assessment, failure to have effective policies for protection and prevention measures, and the failure to provide suitable and sufficient information to the pub’s sub-contracted licensee.

The prosecution is pursuing separate charges against an individual in connection with the case.

“It is rare for a fire and rescue service to undertake prosecutions but, on this occasion, the offences were so severe we felt it was in the public interest to pursue charges,” said group manager Julian Parsons of Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Service’s technical fire safety department. “What this case has shown very clearly is that management companies always have a duty to ensure that public safety is not compromised, even if they have sub-contracted someone to act as licensee.”

He added: “Since these offences came to light, the Little George pub has changed management and subsequent inspections have shown that the issues highlighted by this case have been addressed. In addition, Publicana Ltd, which was cooperative throughout the investigation, has introduced stringent new management procedures to ensure that something like this does not happen again in premises it is responsible for.”

For more information about this subject or any others on the site please call or email us.

Paul

How long is a piece of string?

How long is a piece of string?

A common question to which the answer is dependent upon other factors.

A smoke detector is the same as any other product in the real world, it deteriorates over time and the speed of this is dependent upon two fairly obvious factors;

1. The environment that it is installed within  – In dirty environments it will not last as  long as a clean room

2. Has it been maintained? – Your car requires maintenance to keep it working efficiently and accurately, so does your fire alarm system.

To comply with BS5839 Part 1 2002 +A2, Section 6 point 45.3 subsection (n)  which requires the manufacturers guidance to be followed, the devices should be replaced in accordance with the manufacturers guidance.  I have added an extract below which covers this point.

The Signs

If you start to experience false alarms on your system or the number of calls to site to investigate faults with the devices increase then you may want to ask the question of your maintenance company.

Most, if not all, manufacturers label their devices on the inside or underside of the detectors, for example Apollo Fire Detectors have a series of labels on their products and have produced a guide for reading the date information.

If you have started to experience false alarms this could be due to the age of devices or through contamination of the detector internally, if you allow this to continue, in a very short time this will reduce the effectiveness of the system to evacuate the building as unwanted alarms cause a general mistrust in the systems integrity.

“That blinking fire alarm has gone off again” followed by inaction, which has the same effect as not having a fire detection and alarm system in the first place.

If the age is not found to be the issue then you may need to have the device chamber cleaned, which may require dis-assembly or could be as simple as being blown through with compressed air.  If this is a consideration then please make sure that you consult the services of a qualified and experienced engineer and also note that some devices can not be taken apart and can only be cleaned and re-calibrated by the manufacturer.  When you look at the economics of this you might as well just replace the product that is causing the issue.

The Manufacturers advice

Series 65 Optical Detector

Apollo Fire Detectors (for example) advice is that the product operating life is 10 years based on the operating life of the component manufacturer and that they should be replaced after this time.