A large building in multiple ownership, effectively two buildings with two separate stairways in the centre, one in each side of the building and under separate ownership with a large glazed panel of Georgian wired glass between them. Thirty years ago the fire officer did a inspection under the old fire certificate system and said it had to be treated as one building with a single fire alarm system throughout.

Under the new system of Fire safety Orders each owner of the separate parts building are individually responsible for coming up with their own plans, so at what point are they supposed to consider the building as a whole rather than their section of it, bearing in mind they cannot enforce cooperation onto the other building owners?

Andy

Fire risk assessment?

I look after a particular building, a very large building built and used as a community hall, theatre etc. The shops contained on the ground floor each have their own fire alarm systems, that are then wired as a remote zone on the main buildings fire panel.

Makes sense. The floors offer virtually no fire resistance on this building. A fire down stairs will be upstairs in no time at all, so this gives them a pre-warning.

In your case, i would suggest that despite seperate ownership, its probably all under the umbrella of a single freehold owner- the buck stops there. Everyone else would be on 5-999 year leases.

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Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine....

Every man has to know his limitations- Dirty Harry

Not true Andy - the order requires:



So each duty holder also has responsibilities to other employees (not only thier employees) in the building.

Essentially the responsible persons must co-operate and co-ordinate to manage fire safety. It's a common scenario in many buildings - it doesn't usually cause any problems - although it has led to a few frayed tempers until people actually understand that they are going to court if it goes wrong. It's all about the duty to relevant persons - and that includes visitors, contractors and any other person with legitimate (and sometimes nefarious) business at the site - technically the duty extends to an intruder !!

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

So does something have to go wrong for there to be a court case or is there a process for bringing everyone in line upfront. To put it another way, can you tell the Fire officer the neighbours aren't playing nicely and expect the Fire Brigade to put some pressure on?

Andy

Well FRS are the enforcing authority via Building Control (or possibly EHO).

They can (and will) act over a breach of the RRO.

To end up in court, usually something has gone wrong, but equally if FRS feel the situation is potentially dangerous you be in coyrt anyway - ie there doesn't havde to be a problem - just that "standads" are not being maintained. So, you could end up in court simply for not beingable to produce your risk assesment - which needs to be written down in anything other than very small simple buildings.

If you decide to bring a matter to the attention of building control (and hence FRS) they may well come round to bang a few heads together - but usualy it would start with an "advisory" visit

regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option