Staying Safe at Work

Who’s responsible

You are responsible for fire safety in business or other non-domestic premises if you are:

• An employer
• The owner
• The landlord
• An occupier
• Anyone else with control of the premises, for example a facilities manager, building manager, managing agent or risk assessor

You are known as the ‘responsible person’. If there is more than one responsible person, you have to work together to meet your responsibilities.

The Fire Safety Order also applies if you have paying guests, for example if you run a bed and breakfast, guesthouse or let a self-catering property.

Responsibilities

As the responsible person you must:

• Carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly
• Tell staff or their representatives about the risks you’ve identified
• Put in place, and maintain, appropriate fire safety measures
• Plan for an emergency
• Provide staff information, fire safety instruction and training

You can read about how to make sure your premises are safe from fire in more detail here.

Non-domestic premises

Non-domestic premises are:

• All workplaces and commercial premises
• All premises the public have access to
• The common areas of multi-occupied residential buildings

Shared premises

In shared premises it’s likely there’ll be more than one responsible person. You’ll need to coordinate your fire safety plans to make sure people on or around the premises are safe.
For common or shared areas, the responsible person is the landlord, freeholder or managing agent.

Alterations, extensions and new buildings

When building new premises or doing building work on existing premises, you must comply with building regulations. This includes designing fire safety into the proposed building or extension, further guidance can be accessed here.