Fire Assessments - A Personal Experience

There seems to be a lot of concern over Fire Safety Assessments for B & B's so it seemed appropriate to pass on our own experience.

To give some background, we run a bed and breakfast and limit it to six bed lettings, although for the new fire regs it is the size of property that is important not the number of bedrooms or people sleeping. Remember though, that the magical six beds is important for other non fire related regulations.

Before the visit. You should have undertaken a fire safety assessment of your premises. For each area consider what could be a fire hazard and what would need to be done to remedy any problems seen. It helps if you write this down rather than keep it in memory, the FB will ask to see it if you have it.

We may be fortunate in that previously our property did have a fire certificate, although this was withdrawn as not needed when the previous owners ran it as a b&b rather than guest house. We also have a mains powered, with battery backup, heat and smoke detection system, emergency lighting and self closing fire doors to all bedrooms and public areas. We also have fire extinguishers on both floors.

The Visit. The FB officer read through our assessment, writing it down makes it clear that you have put some thought into it so i recommend you do that before any visit.

He then looked around the house at all doors - self closures, level or fire retardent built in - ours have 30 minute surrounds apparently which is good. He also wanted to see record of fire drills carried out. I had done these six monthly based on previous office working experience. He suggested this be done weekly using a different test point each time.

PAT - Personal Appliance Testing. This is something you need to decide if you want to pay for. I am quite remote and getting this done is not easy. In discussion I said that I would do a visual inspection each year and replace as needed. In fact, with kettles on sale at under £5, it's cheaper to replace them all each year rather that PAT test.

We were told that we had no problems but should consider PAT testing and also do weekly test of system - which I now do. We will have another visit but were told unlikely to be for at leat 3 - 5 years.

The important thing to remember about this legislation is that it is designed to place the importance of fire safety on the property owner. You can no longer hide behind an old fire certificate. It doesn't really ask you to do anything that you would not expect to find if you were staying as a guest. It may mean some expenditure but there is really only one question you need to ask - "What value do you put on the lives of your guests?"

Fire Specialists. These are cropping up all the time offering to inspect premises and tell you what needs doing. My advice? Ignore them all. The FB do the visits without cost to you and will tell you what work is needed. Why pay somebody to do the same when you do not need to?

Summary. You should welcome the visit as a free assessment of the safety of your premises. Make sure you read the free Government handbook - see earlier post on how to get a copy. If you apply common sense to fire safety, follow the recommendations of the FB and consider the well being of guests as paramount you really have nothing to fear.

Yes, you may have to spend some money in bringing your premises up to specs required but is that a bad thing? You have to consider above all else the safety of your guests.