Fire Alarm System

Richard Forrest - Lawrence Webster Forrest
Online advisor - 8 posts

Dear Graham

The responsibility considering the law for fire safety in 'common parts of buildings and for 'common life safety systems' is relatively straight forward. The 'Responsible Person' in law is the individual or organisation that has day to day control over the facility. In your case it will depend to some extrent on the terms of your lease.

If the Landlord retains control over 'common parts and systems' (servicing, maintenance, cleaning, etc) then it is obviously his responsibility to maintain the fire alarm system. If he has divested this responsibility onto another body such as a 'head leasee' then it may fall to this tenant. You should investigate who holds control over the 'common parts' in his respect.

The law (RR(FS)O 2005 requires all parties in such a relationship to cooperate and communicate. I suggest you remind all relvant parties of this statutory duty.

Whilst you are aware of this risk to the life of your staff, you must take measures to mediate the risk, reliance on uncooperative others even if they are responsible may not represent a defence. You should consider what you can do to provide an equavalency to the facility you are lacking and the only way to do that is through the fire risk assessment process which is also a statutory requirement in law.

David Price
Member - 84 posts

Graham, I agree with Richards comments which cover most of the points that you should look at, however you might also want to consider contacting the Fire alarm company to see if they have a service agreement in place for the fire pannel.

The Landlord may have had the pannel installed to improve his rental possibilities and to meet any leagel requirments, but that does not mean that is now responcible for its servicing, unless you are charged a Service charge which covers this kind of thing.

You have reconised that there is a problem, so you are now legally required to do something about it, or you are putting the lives of your staff at risk and the HSE & the Fire Services would take a dim view of this should a Fire break out.

I suggest that you contact all the other tenants in your building to see if they are aware of the problem, they may not be of course if the fire pannel for the building happens to be within your leased area so in affect they never get to see it.

Make them aware of the problem, you may find that there is a shared responcibilty for the fire pannel, if this affects you and you alone then I suggest you contact a Fire alarm company to come and give you an estimate on how much the repairs will cost. If they are less than £250 then I suggest for the safety and piece of mind for you and your staff that you pay for it and then haggle afterwards on who should foot the bill.

Also contact the local fire service or the HSE who can give you some advice on how to proceed with this, if the ammount to have it fixed is more than £250 then I would question how long the system has been installed for? is it still under warranty, and who has been servicing it since it was installed. (perhaps the waranty period is over so now servicing has to be paid for, the landlord as the person who instructed the contractor to install the system should have this information.

Mike Kane
Member - 24 posts

The simple way forward is to contact the Fire Service and make them aware of the situation. They are the enforcing authority and they will make the decision as to who is responsible and if necessary, issue enforcement notices to ensure the repair of the fire alarm. From experience, if the fire alarm system is a single system common to the whole of a multi-occupied building the Fire Service will most likely be looking to the owner and their agents to ensure compliance

Mike Kane
fireuk@msn.com