Compliance with Fire Safety Law

The new Fire Safety Law brings major changes to fire safety regulations.  Fire Authorities will no longer be responsible for issuing fire certificates.  Companies, as well as individuals, will be made responsible for their own compliance with the legislation.  Every organisation will have a duty to mitigate the consequences of any fire and, specifically, to nominate a responsible person’ or 'persons', e.g. the employer, the owner or any other person who exercises control over all, or a part of, the premises.  The responsible person will have to assess the risks of fire in a Fire Risk Assessment and take steps to reduce or remove them.  Should the 'responsible person' fail to carry out these duties they will be held personally liable for injury or death to building and occupants in the event of a fire the Fire Authorities will retain powers for compliance and enforcement.

These responsibilities will equally apply to a contractor who is in charge of part of the premises in order to provide a service e.g. a contract caterer.  They will need to ensure a Fire Risk Assessment is carried out for the catering facility and this assessment must include the kitchen's grease extract ventilation system where grease from the cooking operation accumulates on the canopy, filters, ducting and fan.  This ia a potential fire risk area and the catering contractor has a responsibility to ensure action is taken to eliminate the risk.

Compliance with Insurance Requirements

As a result of the escalating costs of compensation for losses arising from major fires and recent court case judgements, Insurers, particularly those who are members of the Association of British Insurers, are now including clauses in their policies requiring specific action to be taken to reduce fire risks in grease extract systems.

The Norwich Union, one of the UK’s leading providers of commercial property insurance, recently stated on their commercial property policy: “Kitchen extract ductwork needs to be inspected internally to check on the build-up of grease deposits and cleaned annually as a minimum,
although the exact frequency will depend on the level of usage of the cooking
equipment”.

Those who fail to comply with the new Fire Safety Order will find their property insurance either impossible to obtain, difficult to renew or invalid in the case of fire.

CAUTIONARY NOTE

There have been instances where property occupiers have thought their grease extract systems had been cleaned only to find, usually as a result of a fire, that grease deposits had not been removed from the system.  Now, Insurers are demanding that deep cleaning should be carried out in accordance with the Heating and Ventilating Contractors' Association’s Standard TR19 and only contractors who can comply with this specification should be retained.

Ocean Industrial Cleaning, as a member of the HVCA, carry out all deep cleaning services in accordance with this specification and issue post clean reports with photographic evidence and certificates to satisfy insurance requirements.