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Fire Certificates (Fire Precautions Act 1971)

Fire certification regimes have been replaced with a risk assessment approach. This means that businesses will no longer be able to rely on a fire officer from the local brigade visiting their premises and checking that all relevant fire safety management procedures and measures are in place. The Fire Officer is now able to visit your premises and place restrictions as necessary as a member of the Fire Enforcing Authority.

Previously you would have had a Fire Certificate if your premises was one of the following:

(a) used as, or for any purpose involving the provision of, sleeping accommodation;

(b) used as, or as part of,  an institution providing treatment or care;

(c) used for purposes of entertainment, recreation or instruction or for any purposes of any club, society or association;

(d) used for purposes of teaching, training or research;

(e) used for any purpose involving access to the premises by members of the public,  whether on payment or otherwise.

(f) used as a place of work.

(g) If you were subject to either of two statutory instruments (SI) which applied to your premises (these were SI 238 Hotel and Boarding Houses & SI 76 Factories, Office, Shops and Railway Premises).

The most important point of note is that these certificates are not recognised as a substitute for a risk assessment as is now required by the new law.

Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations 1999 (as amended)

Under the Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations there has been a general requirement for a risk assessment. This became a specific requirement for most employers in 1997 where Fire specific law overrode specific law (e.g. conditions of licence) and a risk based fire precaution approach overrode set fire conditions e.g. fire regulations overrode a fire certificate.  As a result of piecemeal development, the situation arose where many hundreds of different separate pieces of legislation were applied often at the same time, by different enforcers.  After some considerable delays, the all-encompassing fire safety regulations took effect from 1 October 2006 and replaced the current over-complex and illogical fire safety regime (Fire Certificates).

The Workplace Fire Precautions Legislation brought together existing Health & Safety Fire Legislation to form a set of dedicated Fire Regulations where the objective was to achieve a risk assessment that was appropriate to standard of fire safety applicable to persons in the workplace.

These regulations were amended on the 1^st December 1999 in order to confirm the concept of the Employer having unconditional responsibility for the safety of employees. As a result most workplaces were then subject to the legal requirements of the above Regulations. The Regulations applied to workplaces where persons are employed to work, but did not apply in workplaces that were:-

a.          Private dwellings;

b.         Used only by the self employed;

c.          Construction sites;

d.         Means of transport;

e.          Mineshafts;

f.          Ships within the meaning of the Merchant Shipping Act (not those permanently moored, under construction of repair etc); 

g.         Offshore installations or open farm/forestry land.

This meant that those workplaces that were subject to the requirements of a fire certificate (or application) had additional legal obligations in respect of the workplace regulations. An existing fire certificate may have formed the basis of the fire risk assessment (but it was not a substitute for a fire risk assessment), the certificate could be supplemented, as required by attaching the risk assessment findings to the certificate, to reduce duplication of work.

Since 1st October 2006

Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRFSO) came into force on 1st October 2006 and replaced the Fire Certificate Regime (with or without a previous) risk assessment issued as explained above. The requirements of the law are now met by the completion of a formal fire risk assessment without any certificate.

'The Order' as it is commonly known consolidates hundreds of different existing legislation and provides a totally integrated risk-based approach to fire safety.

The scope is wide and this now means that this one fire safety regime will apply to all workplaces and other non-domestic dwellings, where the 'responsible person' is to carry out a suitable risk assessment of the workplace.