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Safety advice

Fire safety law in work and public places

If you are responsible for premises and you have customers, staff or visitors, you must put in place measures to protect them from fire. This includes places open to the public like religious buildings, libraries or stately homes.

Who is responsible

Young woman sitting at laptop

These premises include:

  • offices
  • shops
  • restaurants
  • libraries
  • religious buildings
  • leisure centres
  • workshops and garages
  • museums
  • residential care premises
  • hotels

The responsible person is usually:

  • an employer
  • the owner
  • an occupier
  • anyone else with control of the premises, for example a facilities manager, building manager, managing agent or risk assessor

Shared premises

In shared premises, it’s likely there’ll be more than one responsible person. You must co-ordinate your fire safety plans to make sure people on or around the premises are safe.

For common or shared areas, the responsible person is the landlord, freeholder or managing agent.

Alterations, extensions and new buildings

When building new premises or doing building work on existing premises, you must comply with building regulations. This includes designing fire safety into the proposed building or extension.

For more information on the Building Regulations, visit gov.uk.