Compliance guide
Who is the Responsible Person for fire safety?
Fire safety law does not spread the duty thinly across everyone in a building. It lands on a specific person. This is how to find out whether that person is you.
In short
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the Responsible Person is the employer where the premises are a workplace under their control. Where the premises are not a workplace, it is the person who has control of the premises in connection with carrying on a trade, business or other undertaking, and where no such person exists, the owner. A single building can have several Responsible Persons at once, and they are required to cooperate. The duty can never be transferred to a contractor: you may appoint competent people to do the work, but the legal responsibility stays with you.
Who is the Responsible Person?
If the premises are a workplace, it is the employer, to the extent the workplace is under their control. If they are not a workplace, it is whoever controls the premises in connection with running a trade, business or undertaking. If nobody holds that control, it falls to the owner. The test is control, not job title.
People expect a register somewhere, or a certificate naming them. There is neither. The Fire Safety Order defines the Responsible Person by circumstance, which means you can hold the duty without ever having agreed to it, and without anyone telling you. Plenty of small landlords and directors of small companies discover their status during an inspection.
The word doing the work in that definition is control. Not ownership, not occupancy, not who pays the insurance. Whoever is in a position to decide what happens to the building, or to a part of it, carries the duty for that part.
How to work out if it is you
Ask three questions in order. Do you employ people who work in the building? Do you control the premises, or part of them, in connection with a business? Do you own the building where nobody else holds that control? A yes to any of these makes you a Responsible Person for at least part of the premises.
- You employ people who work there. You are the Responsible Person for the workplace under your control.
- You are a landlord letting commercial space. You almost certainly hold the duty for the common parts, and for anything the lease keeps under your control.
- You manage the building for an owner. If you have real control over the premises, the duty reaches you too.
- You own a building nobody else controls. The duty defaults to you.
The one that catches people out: the Order applies to almost all non-domestic premises and to the common parts of blocks of flats and houses in multiple occupation. Your own home is outside it. The shared staircase in the building you let out is not.
What the Responsible Person has to do
Carry out and keep up to date a fire risk assessment, put in place and maintain general fire precautions, keep fire safety equipment in efficient working order, provide information and training to anyone who works there, plan for emergencies, and cooperate with any other Responsible Person in the same building.
The fire risk assessment is the anchor. Everything else follows from it: it identifies the hazards and the people at risk, and it determines what precautions are proportionate. If your assessment is a template someone filled in years ago, or if the building has changed since, then the precautions built on top of it are resting on nothing.
The maintenance duty is where fire alarms, emergency lighting and extinguishers come in. The Order asks for equipment to be in efficient working order and in good repair. It does not name intervals, which is why the recognised standards, BS 5839-1 for alarms and BS 5266-1 for emergency lighting, are used to demonstrate that the duty has been met.
Not sure whether your building meets the maintenance duty?
We survey the fire alarm and emergency lighting, check them against the standard, and give you a written picture of where you actually stand. The survey is free and there is no obligation.
You can delegate the work, not the duty
You may, and often should, appoint competent people to carry out fire risk assessments, servicing and training. What you cannot do is hand over the legal responsibility. If the person you appointed turns out not to be competent, that is a failure of your duty to appoint properly, and enforcement lands on you.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the whole area. A contract with a fire safety company is not a transfer of liability, it is evidence that you took your duty seriously, and it only works as evidence if the company you chose can be shown to be competent.
Because there is no licence to service a fire alarm in the UK, third-party certification is how competence is demonstrated in practice. BAFE registration means a company has been independently assessed against the standard rather than simply asserting it. Manufacturer registration, such as Fike or C-TEC, shows an engineer has been trained on the specific platform in your panel. Ask for both before you appoint, and keep the evidence with your fire safety file.
Shared buildings and split responsibility
Where more than one person has control, each is a Responsible Person for their part, and the Order requires them to cooperate and coordinate. In practice the landlord usually holds the common parts and the structure, and each tenant holds their own demised area. The lease is normally where the boundary is drawn.
Shared buildings fail in the gaps. The alarm panel sits in a cupboard in the common parts, the detectors sit inside tenant areas, and each party assumes the other is servicing them. Nobody is. The system is one system, and it has to be maintained as one, which usually means one contract covering the whole installation with the costs recovered through the service charge.
If you are taking on a lease, the fire safety split is worth reading before you sign rather than after. It determines who pays for remedial work, and remedial work on an aged system is not trivial.
What happens when the duty is not met
Enforcement sits with the local fire and rescue authority. An officer can issue an alterations notice, an enforcement notice requiring specific work, or a prohibition notice closing all or part of the premises. Serious breaches are criminal offences and can carry a fine, imprisonment, or both.
Most enforcement does not begin with a fire. It begins with a routine audit, or a complaint, or a referral after an unrelated visit. The officer asks for the fire risk assessment and the maintenance records, and the state of those two documents sets the tone for everything that follows.
None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to know where your paperwork is. A current fire risk assessment, a serviced alarm system with reports to prove it, and a log book someone actually fills in will answer most of what an officer wants to know.
Read next
How often must a fire alarm be serviced?
Two visits a year, plus a weekly test you do yourself. Where those numbers come from and what each visit covers.
Read the guide Practical guideHow to switch fire alarm provider
You are not tied to whoever installed the system. What a takeover involves and how to move without a gap in cover.
Read the guide Systems guideAddressable or conventional?
What actually separates the two, and which suits your building. Written for owners, not engineers.
Read the guideThe Responsible Person, your questions answered
Who is usually the Responsible Person for fire safety?
In a workplace it is normally the employer. In premises that are not a workplace it is whoever has control of the premises in connection with running a business, and where nobody else has that control, the owner. One building can have more than one Responsible Person.
Can a landlord be the Responsible Person?
Yes, and often is, particularly for the common parts of a building and for anything the lease keeps under the landlord's control. Where a tenant controls their own demised area, duty is shared. The lease is usually where the answer lives.
Can I appoint someone else to be the Responsible Person?
No. You can appoint competent people to carry out the work, and you should, but the legal duty stays with you. Enforcement action is taken against the Responsible Person, not against the contractor they hired.
Does the Responsible Person have to write the fire risk assessment themselves?
Not necessarily. The Order requires the assessment to be suitable and sufficient, and to be carried out by someone competent. If you do not have that competence in house, you appoint someone who does. The duty to make sure it gets done stays with you.
Is the Responsible Person the same as the fire warden?
No. A fire warden or fire marshal is a role you create for evacuation duties. The Responsible Person is a legal status defined by the Fire Safety Order, based on who controls the premises. They can be different people.
Free survey · No obligation
Get a clear picture of where you stand
A free survey of your fire alarm and emergency lighting, checked against the standard, with a written quote for anything that needs doing.
- BAFE approved, Fike and C-TEC certified
- Written quote before any work starts
- Called back within one working day