Fire Evacuation If fire breaks out, and you have disabled people in your building, would you know how to react? It s not acceptable to prevent disabled people from accessing/escaping your premises safely or to avoid the problem altogether. You should not leave it to the emergency services to sort out when they arrive. The responsible person, for example, the business owner or building manager, is legally required to ensure the safe escape of any disabled persons during an emergency. Formulating an appropriate escape plan starts with your Fire Risk Assessment. This document will clarify what you re expected to provide and make some recommendations on how to achieve it. We can help you with the Fire Risk Assessment. What s more, we can help you put your evacuation plans in place. At Fire Safety Services, we are your complete one stop shop for fire safety. Along with our other services, we can supply emergency evacuation plans, fire evacuation drills and reports, evacuation chairs and rescue sheets directly to you. We also offer service and maintenance contracts to guarantee and prolong the life of your equipment. Should you require training, we run courses on how to use this specialist equipment during an emergency. We always recommend this to customers who are new to evacuation procedures and equipment; it pays to be prepared during stressful situations. Are you legally compliant in ensuring that you can safely evacuate anyone from your building? The responsible person has a legal duty to provide a safe means of escape to anyone not just disabled people from their premises. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the current UK legislation for most areas of fire safety and it clearly states what is required. You should also consider that ignoring this duty puts you in breach of the Equality Act 2010 which states that, All businesses are required to ensure that their premises are accessible to persons who have mobility impairments. If you re an employer, this means that you must make any adjustments deemed reasonable so that mobility-impaired people are not at a substantial disadvantage to able bodied people. A simple example of this is providing access to upper floors of buildings via ramps or lifts, but it will also include evacuation during a fire or other emergency. The Equality Act is clear that if you do not take the needs of ALL groups of people into consideration, you may be in breach of the legislation and vulnerable to claims of discrimination.
Who do I need to consider when making alternative evacuation arrangements? To stay on top of both sets of legislation, we recommend you think about key groups of vulnerable people who may use your premises. These could be staff, visitors, customers or any type of user who are/have: In a wheelchair Pregnant On medication Temporarily incapacitated or injured Elderly or infirm Medical conditions Anyone in these groups may require additional assistance during an evacuation and your job now is to ensure that you can safely get them out of your premises. Unless you know with certainty that this is something you ve addressed, we recommend you consider evacuation planning. Fire Safety Services can assist you with your forward planning and guaranteeing compliance by providing: A full site survey with our experienced staff Emergency evacuation plans Fire evacuation drills and reports High quality evacuation equipment Approved certificated training Expert equipment servicing Emergency evacuation plans A fire emergency evacuation plan is a legal requirement and normally takes the form of a written document, which includes the actions to be taken by all staff and nominated persons in the event of a fire and arrangements for calling the fire brigade. For small premises this could take the form of a simple fire action sign posted in the locations where staff and relevant persons can read it and become familiar with its contents. High risk or large premises will need a more detailed emergency evacuation plan which takes account of the findings in the fire risk assessment e.g. staff at significant risk and their location. In addition, notices giving clear and concise instructions of the routine to be followed in case of fire should be prominently displayed. Fire Safety Services has extensive experience in writing emergency evacuation plans for all types of premises in a variety of sectors.
Fire evacuation drills and reports Fire Evacuation Drills should be conducted to simulate fire conditions and to test fire procedures. All staff should be conversant with the premises evacuation procedures and take part in fire evacuation drills at least once and preferably twice per year. Fire Safety Services can offer a service, which will conduct the whole process for you with minimum disruption, and will be observed and timed by a member of our compliance team. We will then be able to give you advice on how to improve the evacuation procedure and will complete a postevacuation report. This will highlight any actions deemed necessary or improvements that maybe required. This document fulfils your responsibility of recording, monitoring and improving the emergency plan required under the current fire legislation. Evacuation chairs The evacuation chair is highly regarded as the safest and most efficient way of evacuating disabled and other vulnerable groups out of buildings. We supply two styles of chair: the Standard and the Excel. Both chairs have been designed for complete ease of use on all flat surfaces and virtually all kinds of staircases and fire escapes, whether internal or external, with or without carpets. They can be operated simply and without fuss by one person. However, if you have complicated exits due to the nature of your building, e.g. spiral staircases, you should consider booking a staff training session. Rescue sheets Rescue sheets have traditionally been used in hospitals and care homes. Affixed to the underside of a mattress, patients are slid onto them from their beds during an evacuation. Our rescue sheets are a more modern version. They are quick to deploy and surprisingly simple to use and can be used as an alternative to the evacuation chair. If you are transporting people who must be kept flat, rescue sheets are more suitable than chairs. Restricted spaces such as narrow corridors, fire escapes and stairwells can make evacuation using the chair all extremely challenging. In these conditions, we recommend you consider using rescue sheets instead. Like our evacuation chair, our rescue sheets are available in two models: the Standard and the Premium Adjustable which offer different levels of comfort and flexibility.
Evacuation chair servicing Evacuation plan written? Check. Evacuation equipment on site? Check. What s next? Did you know that the Provision of Work and Equipment Regulations state that you must ensure that any equipment used by employees is maintained regularly to keep it in efficient working order and good repair? If you haven t thought this far ahead, don t worry. Our expertise (link to service and maintenance page) in delivering service and maintenance contracts for hundreds of customers around the UK can help you meet all legal requirements. Our experienced and qualified technicians will make sure that all your evacuation equipment is kept in optimum condition. This means that in the event of an emergency, you can be sure it s ready to use and won t malfunction. Training courses Investing time and money in adopting the correct procedures and purchasing the right equipment can be wasted if your employees aren t sure how to act in an emergency. Our on-site courses are designed to help you and your employees feel confident and prepared, should fire break out, and you are compelled to use an evacuation chair or other product. All our courses are fully-certified and can be tailored for you depending on: The size of your business premises The number of employees who need training The equipment you have on site which you ll need to be able to operate We will ensure that, at the end of the training session, all delegates walk away with practical, hands-on experience of operating your evacuation equipment. They will also practice a real-life evacuation giving them the opportunity to ask specific questions and educate themselves in a way that s accessible to them. What s invaluable about our training sessions is that they give you total peace of mind. In the event of a fire or other emergency, you d be capable of safely evacuating any mobility impaired or other vulnerable people on your premises at the time.
Feeling more informed about evacuations? We hope so. It s worth taking the time to educate yourself and your employees about what s involved. Not least because of the legal implications if you don t. If there s anything we haven t addressed on this page, please get in touch. We d love to hear from you. And if you d like a quote, we can also help with that. Please call us on 08000 234114 and ask to speak to one of the Fire Safety Services Advisors. For more information on Fire Safety Services fire evacuation services, please contact us or visit our website for further information. www.firesafetyservices.co.uk Call 08000 234114 or email enquiries@firesafetyservices.co.uk With service centres across the UK, we provide national and local coverage to many single or multi-site organisations from a diverse range of business sectors. We are third-party accredited and your one-stop shop for fire safety Fire Safety Services (UK) Limited Head Office: Progress House, 15 Railton Road, Woburn Road Industrial Estate, Kempston, Bedford MK42 7PW The Churches Fire Group delivers complete national fire safety, from large corporate companies to small local businesses, without the need for a third party.