Employer fire safety responsibility

[AHarvey]

I'm going to guess the occupants of the other offices and the shops give no *****, nobody knew what to do and it was nuts, one guy finished his cigarette and went back in, lol.

Am I right in my assumption that my boss should do a fire assessment of our office and everything else and be responsible for his staff/office?

Get in touch with the local fire brigade or H&S at the local council, raise your concerns and go from there. The Fire brigade are keen to tackle this and have departments designed for training/assessment of premises and their procedures.

You could go straight to the HSE with your concerns. http://www.hse.gov.uk/

 

[Caged]

Oh wait this is GD.

Start a fire.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Sooooo fast forward a year or two, we are in new premises and our fire alarms have just gone off, nobody in the office knew what to do and just sat there eating lunch (we have a couple of new employees now so bigger than before) and a lad on work experience for half term, the boss just stuck his wifes coat over the alarm hoping it would go away, it wasn't until it wasn't until a couple of minutes later when I said "Would it not be wise to leave the building now?" that we actually left.

Now, my boss has once again zero clue of the procedures, we are in offices again with a landlord, we now have fire extinguishers readily available, but no other fire safety talks like assembly points have been given to us, where does this stand with regards laws? I'm not looking to take anyone to court, I just want to know what the things are that we should know in case of a fire, as clearly what just happened is unacceptable.

Provision of information to employees
19.—(1) The responsible person must provide his employees with comprehensible and relevant information on—

(a)the risks to them identified by the risk assessment;

(b)the preventive and protective measures;

(c)the procedures and the measures referred to in article 15(1)(a);

(d)the identities of those persons nominated by him in accordance with article 13(3)(b) or appointed in accordance with article 15(1)(b) ; and

(e)the risks notified to him in accordance with article 22(1)(c).

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1541/article/19/made

At least one breach of the Regulatory Reform (fire safety) Order. Possibly even HASAWA 1974 under section 2 (duties of employers to their employees).

My advice... raise it officially with your company, get it documented THEN go the legal route. If you go running to HSE/Fire they'll take action BUT if they find evidence that this has been acknowledged and not acted upon, you'll get greater success.

 

[Chris Wilson]

There's no emergency lighting or anything in the whole building, one of the things that the guy last week from the new company mentioned needed changing.

There was a fire alarm system installed last year (which get tested regularly) by someone, but as far as designated assembly points go etc, risk assesments there is nothing.

How should I push this to get the attention it needs?

Very carefully, and with kid gloves if you value your job and promotion prospects <LOL>

Weigh up your own escape plans. Forget "women first" they'll probably bring a case for something if you segregate them in an emergency

 

[antijoke]

Awesome, thanks chaps.

 

[ubersonic]

Sooooo fast forward a year or two, we are in new premises and our fire alarms have just gone off, nobody in the office knew what to do and just sat there eating lunch

Natural selection in action XD

 

[DB_SamX]

At least one breach of the Regulatory Reform (fire safety) Order. Possibly even HASAWA 1974 under section 2 (duties of employers to their employees).

My advice... raise it officially with your company, get it documented THEN go the legal route. If you go running to HSE/Fire they'll take action BUT if they find evidence that this has been acknowledged and not acted upon, you'll get greater success.

DO this.

Even before I read the other posts, I knew it would be falling foul of the HSAWA 1974.

 

[antijoke]

As far as raising it formally with my employer goes does asking what the procedures are, who is the designated fire person is and where is the fire risk assessment what to ask?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

As far as raising it formally with my employer goes does asking what the procedures are, who is the designated fire person is and where is the fire risk assessment what to ask?

If you have a concern reporting system raise it via that. If not, bring it up in meetings (ideally minuted) and say you’ve got concerns after the confusion during the last drill/test.

Say that you've done some reading and perhaps mention that the law requires that everyone is given some formal training, which they can do at zero/low cost.

 

[wolfie138]

you don't work in a Pampers factory, do you? if so, action needs to be taken immediately, just in case.

 

[MooMoo444]

Fire safety is a serious matter. Report it to the authorities.