Posted By Diane Wilson I am interested to find out if whether people are going down the route of putting fire wardens through the NVQ 'competent persons' training or whether the decision has been made to continue with comprehensive in-house training

Posted By Frank Hallett Hi Diane I don't know either. However, if you are considering which training to provide, you really must consider which is actually most relevant and tailored to your business and how YOU run YOUR emergency procedures. Along with that, you have to clearly identify the functions that YOU wish the Fire Marshal/Warden to undertake as there is no specific legislative minimum for such activities and it really is down to each employer to specify the functions, and how they implement them, of any persons appointed to assist in emergency response. If you send your employees on any training event without ensuring that the outcomes are an acceptably close to what you actually do, there will be a training gap that you must then address when they return from the training. This is hardly cost-effective nor even acceptable if the training gap leaves holes in your employees knowledge or skill for undertaking their emergency functions; it's also potentially d**n dangerous! The NVQ process is essentially workplace based; so the "student" will only be able to produce evidence to support their NVQ for what they have actually done. This still requires the employer to have not only produced and implemented a suitable emergency response regime, it also remains the employers duty to ensure that the training, in this case fulfilling the selected NVQ Elements, is achieved before the employee is allowed to undertake the functions of Fire Marshal/Warden. An NVQ does allow the employer to select relevant parts of the basic objectives, skills & knowledge; but the reality is that there is very little objective evaluation by the employers of this ability and it tends to be all or nothing. For Fire Marshal/Wardens I would suggest that once you have addressed the match of training required to be competent in YOUR procedures to that offered, and also clearly identified where any training gaps might be; you then balance the costs and time involved of a formal, programmed in-house training session that is explicitly created for what you actually require against the NVQ process and the external course. Frank Hallett