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.
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