Common areas of flats

[Tom Sutton]

Jokar are you sure Mushy`s quote is a direct lift from the RR(FS)O Article 5?

Guidance Note 1 states,

Article 5 – Duties under this Order

This article sets out the duty imposed on the responsible person (and others) to ensure that the requirements of the Order and any Regulations made under it are complied with in the premises. Article 5 implements the European Workplace Directive giving employers the unconditional duty for ensuring the safety of their employees. The article imposes similar duties on persons other than the responsible person (see article 3).

[jokar]

As far as memory serves, yes.

[kurnal]

Hi TW
If you look at post 4 in this thread I have pasted a link to the RRO and yes Mushy has quoted all of article 5 bar the first paragraph relating to workplaces.

[val]

Mushy, I'm sorry, I did not mean to be patronising, I was just impressed by Kurnals's dedication.

However, to return to the question, you need to look at the interpretation of domestic premises;

"domestic premises" means premises occupied as a private dwelling (including any garden, yard, garage, outhouse, or other appurtenance of such premises which is not used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling);

clearly the stairs etc are used 'in common' and therefore fall under the Fire Safety Order.

The responsible person, other than in a workplace, is best thought of as the person who has, or exercises 'control'. In your case this could be a company if the residents have set one up to manage any maintenance or they may have apppointed contracturally a manageing agent to look after the fabric of the building, more likely the occupants would be deemed jointly and severally, the responsible persons. In theory if there was a breach, all of them could stand in the dock. This is extremely unlikely to happen but is technically possible.

Hope this helps.

[Mushy]

Val

No, that was just my (bad) sense of humour and I never thought you were patronising

Thank you for your post which was helpful.

If you type into google fire risk assessments it comes up with a whole array of websites for consultants. On their websites, the majority of them only mention about workplaces needing a fire risk assessment, and if 5 or more employed it needs to be documented etc.

Thats why I came on here to try and clarify it.

Thanks to you all.

[Tom Sutton]

Mushy, that may be just a Fire Brigade interpretation for their individual Policy as regards the enforcement of the Order.  It is not what the law states.

Kurnal I think the original question, with the limited information given, was answered in the first few posts it was the above quote that I did not understand and still do not or is Jokar living up to his ID. D'oh!

[jokar]

The bits in Article 5 were obviously correct.  All Brigades are doing their best to undertake interpretation and the particular fire officer that Mushy mentioned had an interpretation which may have been in part some of the individual Brigade Policy.

[Ken Taylor]

There is some confusion about on this as most other risk assessments are required of employers and persons in control of workplaces under health and safety legislation - but with this fire safety law (RRO) employment is not a determining factor but mainly whether premises are domestic or not.