Does a Fire Warden Need Training?
1st Mar 2018
As a business owner, it's important to be in compliance with all fire safety regulations. In the event of a fire, it is important to have a trained fire warden in charge.
A fire warden can help ensure the safety of those present and maintain order in an emergency. However, many people wonder if a fire warden needs training. The answer is yes—fire wardens should be properly trained to perform their duties in the event of a fire.
This training can include how to use a fire extinguisher, how to evacuate people from a building and much more besides. Without proper training, a fire warden could put people at risk in an emergency situation.
A Safe Place to Work
Your workplace should be a safe environment for everyone: yourself, your employees, your colleagues and any customers you have entering the premises.
Ensuring workplace fire safety guidelines are met is probably done more out of obligation than passion for most small to medium business owners and employers. However, in the event of a workplace fire you want the peace of mind that your employees know what to do, and ultimately to ensure that everyone evacuates the building safely.
If you are the business owner or employer you will find that responsibility for fire safety in the workplace, by default, falls on your shoulders. In the wording laid out in The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which came into effect on 1st October 2006, you are the responsible person.
One of your duties as the responsible person is to ensure that staff know what to do in an emergency. If you have more than a handful of staff then you should appoint one or more Fire Wardens, in line with numbers of staff, departments or floors. Their main job is to ensure that everyone leaves the building in the event of a fire (or an evacuation drill). They may also be trained to use an extinguisher, call the Fire Service and conduct a roll call at the assembly point.
A Fire Wardens job often includes fire safety awareness and checks of equipment. They will need to be aware of hazards such as inappropriate use of electrical extension leads, fire doors propped open and missing or used extinguishers. Some of these checks will need to be recorded.
Fire Drills and Training
Legislation states that all employees should receive fire safety awareness training during normal working hours, which should be repeated periodically where appropriate. All staff should have a basic level of fire awareness training, while fire wardens should receive training suitable for their level of responsibility.
So, in answer to this blog’s title question, yes, a fire warden does require training.
Although the legislation set out in The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 helpfully states that fire wardens require “adequate” fire safety training, the actual level and type of training required, as well as the frequency of this training, is not specified. In other words, it is left up to the responsible person to be responsible for the training. A Fire Risk Assessment (which is obligatory) will often spell out what is appropriate in the circumstances. All this can really add to the workload of a business owner who understandably has a lot of other pressures to deal with.
What kind of Training does a Fire Warden Need?
A fire warden requires the right training for their level of responsibility.
This is an ambiguous requirement which doesn’t really help the responsible person arrange and deliver training to the fire warden. It is difficult to fulfil fire safety training obligations if it is not clear what training is required.
Red Box Fire Control understands how challenging it can be to fulfil the role as the responsible person in your company.
We can help by assessing your company’s needs for fire safety training and deliver a bespoke training session to your fire warden(s), which will be relevant to your company’s fire risks. We can also combine the training for fire wardens and staff into one session to save on cost.
We can come to your premises to deliver the training, or your staff can visit our premises. There is also an option of live fire extinguisher training using a clean and safe training rig, which provides an increased level of confidence to your fire wardens in the event of an actual fire.
If logistics, time management and cost are issues for your company we can also provide online training for fire wardens. Responsible persons or managers can monitor their account to see the progress of individual users.
Red Box Fire Control also supply a range of fire warden equipment designed to assist in evacuations and rescue.
For further details, please call our Didcot office on 0808 168 7000 or...
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