Page 1 of 1

Poor Govt Fire Safety Guidance

Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 5:32 pm
by Messy
The UK Govt have helpfully prepared advice to help employers get their employees back to work safely. I have no idea who compiled the fire safety part of the guidance, or checked it before sign off but its is very poor:

The emergency plan guidance lists a load of stuff that is nice to have (like a clear escape route!), but fails to mention the most important requirement, staff instructions. This would include:
  • what staff should do if they discovered fire,
    how to raise the alarm,
    how to escape,
    how and who is calling the fire service,
    evacuation of vulnerable people
All the above is missing from the guidance
https://www.gov.uk/workplace-fire-safet ... tion-plans

And later in the guidance, in Fire Safety Equipment, Training and Drills it states "You must have a fire detection and warning system." and then goes on to discuss detector head types, so clearly refers to electrical, automatic fire detection.

This is clearly bonkers many small workplaces either have a manual (break glass) fire alarm (not detection) system, or simply use the shout of fire. Can you imagine a single portacabin of one room or a simple retail unit that must have automatic fire detection?
https://www.gov.uk/workplace-fire-safet ... d-training

Without getting political here (as this is an apolitical post), this is another example of a well meaning idea from the Govt, let down by being very poorly communicated. I have contacted gov.uk with an amendment, so if they act rapidly, I have attached an example of their poor advice
CV-19 FS Advice.tiff
CV-19 FS Advice.tiff (218.41 KiB) Viewed 2074 times

Re: Poor Govt Fire Safety Guidance

Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 8:45 pm
by bernicarey
That is a ridiculous statement for them to make.

However, I don't think it is specific to CV19 information, i.e getting 'back to work' at the current time.
The GOV website is poorly designed graphically. This section is bad from a Quality Management aspect as there is not Control of it, date published or reviewed etc.
If you go back up the menus from where that nonsense is written, you get back to the main GOV homepage without going via any new CV19 pages.

The H&S link goes to the HSE 'Health & Safety made Simple' microsite.
Fire Nonsense.JPG
This could have been here for a few years and nobody has noticed.