Buildings full of people who cannot be expected to evacuate themselves.
Schools, nurseries and childcare settings need a recorded fire risk assessment under the Fire Safety Order built around occupants who cannot be expected to evacuate themselves: staff-led evacuation, assembly, detection and fire doors. The responsible person is the local authority, governing body or proprietor depending on how the school is run, and the assessment feeds the setting's evacuation drills.
Every other premises type assumes the occupants will hear an alarm and leave. Here that assumption does not hold, and the whole strategy has to be built around staff.
Ratios, who sweeps which rooms, who takes the register, and what happens when the person who normally does it is off sick. It has to work on a wet Tuesday with a supply teacher.
Getting everyone out is half of it. Knowing you have got everyone out is the other half, and it is the half that goes wrong.
A nursery room, a sixth form and a wheelchair user in the same building need different plans that have to work simultaneously.
Victorian core, seventies block, and two sets of portacabins. Compartmentation between the phases is where the surprises live.
Evening lettings, holiday clubs and community use put different people in the building with none of the daytime staff knowledge.
The two rooms where fires actually start, both usually staffed by people who are not thinking about fire.
Estyn and Care Inspectorate Wales both expect to see a current, recorded fire risk assessment, and they will ask who wrote it and when it was last reviewed. Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service audit school premises and start with the same document.
Since 1 October 2023 the assessment must be recorded in full in Wales regardless of the size of the setting, which caught a lot of small independent nurseries and preschools that had been working from a short checklist.
It depends on how the school is run. At a maintained school it is usually the local authority together with the governing body; at a voluntary aided or independent school it is normally the governors or the proprietor. In practice the headteacher or business manager holds the day-to-day duty, and the assessment should name who does what.
A domestic dwelling used for childminding sits in an unusual position. The Fire Safety Order applies where you are carrying on a business from the premises, and Care Inspectorate Wales will expect to see a fire risk assessment as part of registration. It does not need to be an industrial-scale document, but it does need to exist.
Weekly, from a different call point each time, with the result written down. Evacuation drills at least termly, and at least one of them should be at an awkward moment rather than the same slot every term.
That needs a personal emergency evacuation plan written for the individual child, not a generic line in a policy. It should say who assists, with what equipment, to where, and what happens if that person is off that day.
Usually more of it. Very young children cannot respond to an alarm themselves, so the strategy depends entirely on staff moving them, which means you need earlier warning and shorter travel distances than an adult workplace would justify.
Many preschools rent one, and the duty splits between two parties.
How the visit works and how little disruption it causes.
Why two quotes for the same building look nothing alike.
Tell us the building and we will give you a price on the phone. Most assessments are booked within the week.