Guides · 6 min read
What a fire officer actually asks for
The fire risk assessment is the opening question, not the whole visit. What follows is everything that should have happened since it was written.
It starts with the assessment, and moves on quickly
An inspecting officer will want the current fire risk assessment, who carried it out, and when. That part is usually fine. The conversation then turns to what the assessment recommended — and this is where visits tend to go wrong, because the recommendations were read once and never turned into work with an owner and a date.
Then the routine records
Weekly alarm tests, monthly emergency lighting, extinguisher servicing, fire door checks, drills. Individually trivial; collectively they are most of the evidence that the arrangements described in the assessment are the ones actually in operation. A log that stops three months ago says more than a missing one, because it shows something was working and then stopped.
Then the people
Who the fire wardens are, when they were trained, whether the training has expired, and how staff — including casual and agency staff — were told what to do. Organisations with a changing workforce find this hardest, and it is also the part an officer can test simply by asking somebody.
What tends to be missing
Three things, consistently. Evidence that assessment findings were closed rather than noted. Evidence that anybody checked the work was actually done. And any record at all for people who do not have an email address at the organisation.
What to do about it
None of this needs software. It needs the recommendations to become dated items with names against them, the routine checks to be recorded where they happen rather than written up later, and something to show that people were told. DutyHub does those three things, but a well-kept folder does them too — what matters is that they are done at all.
This guide describes what organisations are commonly asked for. It is not legal advice and it is not a statement of what your organisation must do — that depends on your premises, your activities and your own assessment, and it is a question for you and your adviser. The regime pages linked below name the legislation so you can read the source.