Your Duties
Responsibility for complying with the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005
and the associated Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006 rests
with the dutyholder.
In a workplace, this could be the employer as well as any other
person who may have control to any extent of any part of the
premises, for example, the occupier or owner. Employees have a duty
to cooperate with employers to ensure the safety of others from
fire.
If you are the dutyholder, you must carry out a fire risk
assessment of the premises, which must focus on the safety of all
'relevant persons' in case of fire.
Your fire risk assessment will help you identify risks that can
be removed or reduced and to decide the nature and extent of the
general fire precautions you need to take to protect people against
the fire risks that remain. If you employ five or more people, you
must record the significant findings of your risk assessment.
A management commitment to fire safety is essential to assist with
achieving suitable fire safety standards in premises and to
maintain a staff culture of fire safety.
It is a management responsibility to have both an emergency fire
action plan and arrangements to implement the plan. A written
emergency fire action plan should be kept on the premises, be
available to and known by staff, and form the basis of the training
and instruction, which is provided to all staff. This plan should
be available for inspection by the enforcing authority.
The Scottish Government has produced a suite of guidance
documents to assist the dutyholder in keeping his/her premises safe
from fire.
These guidance documents are free to download from the Info
Scotland website. Click on the text links below to access documents
about the following types of premises:
Further Information
For further information, you can download the Fire Safety
Guidance Booklet here.
