Open air events and venues
If you have, own or run an open air event or venue, you must carry out a fire risk assessment. This is the law.
You can learn what a fire risk assessment is below. This applies to theme parks, zoos, music concerts, festivals, sporting events, fairgrounds, car boot sales, county fairs and other similar events.
Your Fire Risk Assessment must be carried out by your Responsible Person such as employers, managers, organisers, occupiers and owners of open air events and venues., You can also employ a professional Fire Risk Assessor to do the assessment for you.
(Find further information about event safety on our 'Event safety' page)
What is a fire risk assessment
A fire risk assessment is an assessment of the possible fire risks for your open air event or venue and what can be done to remove or reduce them. You must record the required information and keep it up to date.
Every open air event or venue has a legal responsibility to do and maintain a fire risk assessment. It is there to help keep you, your customers, visitors, staff, public and venue safe from fire. Responsible persons may wish to carry out the fire risk assessment for less complex events or venues. Alternatively, or for complex premises, advice should be sought from a competent person.
The Government produces a guide which tells you how to carry out a fire risk assessment and is particularly useful for employers, managers, organisers, occupiers and owners of such events and venues.
If you don't want to do your fire risk assessment yourself
If you cannot carry out the Fire Risk Assessment yourself, you can employ someone to do it for you.
You will still be legally responsible for your Fire Risk Assessment and so it is important that you use or employ a person who can do the job correctly. Take a look at the things you should check before employing someone to do your Fire Risk Assessment
When we inspect your event or venue
Kent Fire and Rescue Service are legally required to inspect open air events and venues and make sure that you have appropriate fire safety in place. This is to help protect you, your venue or event, the public, your staff, customers and anyone who uses it from the risk of fire.
Our Inspector will make sure that your event or venue complies with the government guidance found in 'Fire Risk Assessment for Open air events and venues' referred to above.This means the things you need to do to make sure that:
- if there is a fire, everyone should be able to escape safely and unaided
- the appropriate fire alarm(s) and warnings, signage, lighting and other requirements referred to in the government guidance are in place to assist people to evacuate if there is a fire
- that you know what to do if there is a fire, and that this information has been passed onto your staff and other relevant people
- you are doing everything to stop fire in the first place by identifying fire hazards and people at risk, and by removing or reducing those hazards and risks
- that you keep records of what you do and keep your Fire Risk Assessment updated