Residential care premises
If you have, own, run or manage residential care premises, you must carry out a fire risk assessment. This is the law.
It applies to premises where the main use of the building (or part) is the provision of residential care - this means the main purpose must be personal and/or nursing care, but not healthcare.If you provide healthcare please see the guidance for Healthcare premises. If you provide sheltered housing, please see the guidance for Sleeping accommodation.
Examples of residential care premises includes those caring for the elderly or infirm, children and young persons,those with special needs and those with addictions.
Your Fire Risk Assessment must be carried out by your Responsible Person - this is the person who has control of the premises. Alternatively, you can employ a professional Fire Risk Assessor to do the assessment for you.
What is a fire risk assessment
A fire risk assessment is an assessment of the possible fire risks in your residential care premises and what can be done to remove or reduce them. You must record the required information and keep it up to date.
Every residential care premises has a legal responsibility to do and maintain a fire risk assessment. It is there to help keep you, your residents, staff, visitors, and building safe from fire.
The Government produces a guide which tells you how to carry out a fire risk assessment. The guidance is for 'employers, managers, occupiers and owners of permanently staffed premises providing residential care where some or all of the residents might require assistance in the event of a fire'. While it is possible to do the fire risk assessment yourself, particularly if your premises are small or low risk, many residential care premises may prefer to employ a fire risk assessor to undertake the assessment for them..
If you want to employ a fire risk assessor to do your Fire Risk Assessment...
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 premises
Kent Fire and Rescue Service are legally required to inspect residential care premises and make sure that you have appropriate fire safety in place. This is to help protect you, your building, your staff, residents and anyone who uses the building from the risk of fire.
Our Inspector will make sure that your premises comply with the government guidance found in 'Fire Risk Assessment for Residential care premises' referred to above.This means the things you need to do to make sure that:
- if there is a fire, the building will hold back fire and smoke to allow enough time for people to escape
- the building has the appropriate fire alarm(s) and warnings, signage, lighting and other requirements referred to in the government guidance 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 risks, and by removing or reducing those hazards and risks
- that you keep records of what you do and keep your Fire Risk Assessment updated