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£4.50 Issue 106 / 2020 The Magazine for Apartment Building Management Recruitment Feature Special edition
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QUESTION My block hasn't had a fire risk assessment for some time. How often are they required to be done and who is responsible? ANSWER The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the regulation which most explicitly defines the need for Fire Risk Assessments to be carried out in the common areas of blocks of flats. There are various guidance documents and standards which provide detail on how to achieve compliance with that regulatory requirement, although they stop short on prescribing a specific review period. This is an intentional omission from the regulations because no two properties are the same: higher risk buildings will likely require significantly more frequent reviews than those lower risk buildings. By not prescribing a single review period other than ”regularly”, the regulations give the competent person the freedom to apply a sensible and manageable review date appropriate to the property that they are assessing. A good risk assessment should, among other things, include the recommended date of the next review. If the person responsible for managing the property choses to disregard this recommendation and apply their own review period, then this is likely to lead to risks arising and remaining unidentified
of significant risk to report back to the Property Manager accordingly. Therefore every risk assessment review should certainly take into account the findings of the previous risk assessments, but they should also be a fresh and objective report of risk at the property. To answer your question of responsibility, within an ordinary freeholder/leaseholder set-up, the freeholder has the ultimate responsibility for the safety and fire integrity of the communal areas. They are considered to be the duty holder and the responsible person for the block, but they will have likely delegated that responsibility, through formal contract, to a specialist managing Aagent. This may be slightly different where there is an RMC in place or there is no formal management contract. Indeed, many agents choose to act on a consultancy- only basis for the directors of RMC companies, acting as knowledgeable advisors, but leaving them both responsible and liable for fire risk management. It will very much depend on the terms of any management agreement, but RMC directors should be aware of their obligations to manage all aspects of Risk at their property. Gregg Masters is head of client services at 4Site Consulting QUESTION I am enquiring to see if you know of any written protocols/ advice from any source which
at the property. Unless such a delay has a
reasonable justification, it could also lead to enforcement action from the authorities. There are times when it may be considered reasonably practicable and wholly appropriate to delay the completion of a risk assessment, but this should never be for any significant period of time and only decided upon on a case-by- case basis (with any justification recorded accordingly). In our experience, most residential block fire risk assessments have annual review dates applied to them, with some very low risk properties having anything between 18–36 month review dates, although the latter are rare. It is worth noting that there is some conflicting guidance (not regulation) available which suggests that there is a difference between a review and a new risk assessment, suggesting that a review should only addressing the status of the existing risks noted from the last risk assessment, making it a shorter process overall. To dispel this myth, I can confirm, in our capacity as risk assessors for residential property, the process of reviewing only prior-identified risks at a property can never actually work in practice, because good and competent risk assessors will not ignore new risks that become apparent on site simply because they fall outside of the scope of their inspection. They are duty and morally bound to highlight and evaluate all areas
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