A Pub Fire Risk Assessment is a vital tool in ensuring the fire safety of you, your venue and your customers.

The summer weather brings with it an upturn in pub goers, with people wanting to enjoy a refreshing drink in the sunshine.

Busier environments create bigger risks so now is the perfect time to ensure that your fire safety measures and procedures are fully up to standard.

Any Pub Fire Risk Assessment undertaken by a competent person will consider a set number of steps. When assessing a pub, bar or club, these steps will be adapted to meet the specific requirements of those premises.

UK Fire Consultants utilise a nationwide network of fully trained fire risk assessors with vast combined expertise and experience. We have used this collective knowledge to put together the below list of 5 fire safety tips to help your pub prepare for a Pub Fire Risk Assessment.

1. Know Your Pub Capacity

Ensuring that your pub is fire safe involves you having a detailed evacuation plan in the event of a fire emergency. If a fire does occur, you must be able to get customers and staff out of the building quickly and safely.

This means that you need to know your venue’s maximum exit capacity. This is likely to have been already determined by your premises license or a previous Fire Risk Assessment. It will involve working out the number of people who can occupy the building at one time safely, and the capacity of exit routes to allow safe evacuation. Further guidance on working out your pub’s capacity is available online.

If you allow your pub to get over-crowded, you will not only be in breach of your license, but you will also be placing the safety of customers and staff at risk. It is likely that the designated exit routes will not be sufficient.

If you are seeking additional guidance on your venue’s capacity, please get in touch with UK Fire Consultants.

2. Keep Exit Routes Clear and Operational

As discussed above, an evacuation plan is vital. All staff must be aware of this plan and know what to do in the event of an emergency.

A Pub Fire Risk Assessment shall look at this evacuation plan and how it is actioned on site. This will include assessing whether your designated exits and escape routes are clearly sign posted, and clear of obstruction.

In a busy working environment it can easy to prioritise speed over safe practice. Empty barrels, bags of rubbish and old cardboard boxes can be discarded to the side ready to dispose of correctly at a more convenient time. However, if a fire occurs, this waste can cause major problems when evacuating and potentially put the life of staff and customers at risk.

Many pubs and bars can be dark inside to match the designed tone and ambience. Emergency exit signs should be present through to help clearly guide customers and staff towards safety, with emergency lighting also in place should the electricity fail.

Book Your Pub Fire Risk Assessment

3. Safely Use Flags and Bunting

We all know that special occasions and festivities are big occasions for pubs. Whether it’s the World Cup and Six Nations, or St George’s Day and St Patrick’s Day, pubs and bars love to get in the spirit and decorate accordingly.

However, decorating the pub in flags and bunting should not be in place of good fire safety. Ensure that any flags or posters placed up in the pub do not cover fire exit signs. In the event of an fire, customers within the premises should be able to clearly see the exit signs and emergency lighting. Do not place flags or bunting in a way which compromises this.

The use of bunting should also be considered. Hanging paper or plastic bunting across the length of your pub may look good, but it greatly increases the ability for fire to spread.

The recent fire tragedy at a bar in a Swiss ski resort sadly showed how a fire can spread quickly and in a devastating manner. A pub Fire Risk Assessment will highlight the risks involved in the decoration of your property, and provide guidance where appropriate.

4. Ensure All Staff Are Suitably Trained

When you onboard a new member of staff, you should go through all fire safety training including evacuation procedures.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the crucial legislation which informs all fire safety regulations within the UK. When discussing staff training, it is quite clear that all employees must be trained, the training must be repeated regularly, and the training must be altered to adapt to any changes within the workplace.

When a Pub Fire Risk Assessment takes place on site, the inspector will look for evidence that all of your staff are trained in what to do in the event of a fire. Not only do your staff need to know what they do, but they also need to be able to perform a full evacuation in a timely manner.

Get A Quote Today

5. If Your Pub Changes, Everything Must Be Updated

You might think that having one Pub Fire Risk Assessment is enough. However, if anything changes within your pub, you must have another assessment done.

If you expand your building, add a new kitchen, or move the bar area, then the fire risk assessment you have on record is outdated.

The changes you have made will also have changed your pub’s capacity. What was your safe capacity may now be unsafe, so you should not assume that you can operate as before.

All staff training must also be updated to ensure that it is inline with the changes to your premises.

If you make any changes to your building, make sure that a new Pub Fire Risk Assessment takes place.

Choose UK Fire Consultants For Your Pub Fire Risk Assessment

If you own or manage a pub but don’t feel comfortable performing a Fire Risk Assessment yourself, then you must hire a competent Fire Risk Assessor to do it for you.

UK Fire Consultants can deploy an accredited, fire safety expert to complete a Pub Fire Risk Assessment that considers all industry standards as well as the individual characteristics of your property.

Once the assessment has been completed our report shall be verified by a second industry professional and will be broken down into clear, user-friendly actions.

If you are looking for a trusted partner to complete your Pub Fire Risk Assessment, contact UK Fire Consultants today.

Get A Fire Risk Assessment Quote