Why provide fire safety training?
- It saves lives
- It’s the law
- Training can stop fires happening in the first place
- In the event of a fire, it will help to keep your people safer and could reduce damage to your business or building
Employers are legally required by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, to provide information, instruction and training to employees about fire precautions in the workplace.
What does ‘adequate fire safety training’ mean?
It varies depending on your business, but it generally includes:
- Induction for all new staff to cover general fire awareness.
- Regular refresher training, or extra training if the level of fire risk has increased as a result of changes in your operations.
- Training to support people in meeting their fire safety duties, including keeping ‘responsible persons’ up to date on fire safety law.
- Training those responsible for fire risk assessments or becoming fire wardens.
What kind of fire safety training should be provided?
It depends on your business or organisation, and who you’re training. There’s four main areas that staff should be trained in:
- Prevention – This includes basic fire prevention, risk awareness, your smoking policy and emergency plan.
- What to do if there’s a fire – What to do if they discover a fire, if they hear a fire alarm, escape routes, refuges and exits, how to raise the alarm and who calls the fire and rescue service.
- Equipment and good practice – Where your firefighting equipment is stored, how to use it and the importance of fire doors.
- Fire alarms – Who is responsible for testing alarms, how to report incidents including ‘near miss’ events and false alarms.
Be prepared – complete your Fire Risk Assessment
If you’re responsible for a premises, as well as providing training, you need to complete a Fire Risk Assessment.
Also in this section
Page last updated