Hospitality

Fire risk assessments for pubs, restaurants and hotels

Public access, hot kitchens, a cellar full of gas, and often people asleep upstairs. Hospitality carries more fire risk in one building than almost anything else on the high street.

What we look at

Kitchens and extract

Grease in the ductwork, filter cleaning, suppression where fitted, and whether the fryer is anywhere near the only way out of the back.

Cellars and gas

CO2 and mixed gas cylinders, ventilation, cellar flaps used as an escape, and the trap door nobody has opened since the last landlord.

Letting rooms and staff flats

Sleeping risk changes everything: separation, protected routes, detection that wakes people, and a plan for guests who do not know the building.

Escape with a full house

Capacity, exit widths, doors that are locked during service, and beer garden gates that are padlocked at ten to eleven.

Seasonal staff

Induction, drills, who calls the fire service, and who checks the building is empty. The weakest link in most Pembrokeshire summers.

Historic fabric

Tenby, Pembroke and St Davids are full of listed hospitality. Recommendations have to be things a conservation officer will actually approve.

The insurance angle

Increasingly, the fire risk assessment is not the fire service's document, it is the insurer's. After a claim, the loss adjuster asks for the assessment, the alarm test records and the extract cleaning certificates. If the assessment does not exist, or predates October 2023 and was never recorded properly, that conversation goes badly.

Questions from operators

Do I need one if I have no letting rooms?

Yes. Any pub, café or restaurant is a workplace and premises the public use, so the Fire Safety Order applies. Letting rooms raise the stakes because of sleeping risk, but they are not what triggers the duty.

What about staff living above the pub?

That is sleeping accommodation and it changes the assessment considerably. Separation between the trading floor and the accommodation, a protected route out, and detection that will actually wake someone are the three things we look at hardest.

Is the kitchen extract part of it?

Yes. Grease build-up in ductwork is one of the most common causes of serious fires in hospitality, and cleaning records are one of the first things an insurer asks for after a claim.

We are seasonal. Does that matter?

It matters a lot. A team hired in May who have never been shown the back door is a real risk, and it is the finding we make most often in Tenby and Saundersfoot. The assessment covers what induction actually needs to include.

Related

Holiday lets and parks

If you also let self-catering, that is assessed differently again.

What happens on the day

How the visit runs, and how long a pub with rooms takes.

Where we work

Tenby, Saundersfoot, Narberth and the rest of the county.

Book a fire risk assessment

Tell us the building and we will give you a price on the phone. Most assessments are booked within the week.