I have just read Ed Hall’s article ‘The Heat is On’ in the September issue of the IOSH magazine, Safety & Heath Practitioner. (SHP). The article is about achieving compliance with Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety)Order 2005. Whilst I agree with much of what he included in the article (an in particular, the apparent widespread over reliance on tick box FRAs), I do not agree with his interpretation of the RR(FS)O 2005 with regards to his definition of the ‘Responsible Person” and their duties. On page 49 of Sept's SHP, under the heading of ‘ What duty holders must do?’(sic), he states: “Under the RRO the employer or landlord must appoint a ‘Responsible Person’ to oversee a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment” In fact, Article 3 of the RRO makes it clear that it is usually the employer or person in control of the premises ( in some cases the landlord) who are the ‘Responsible Person’ and not somebody that the employers appoints. In addition, Article 5(1) states it is the Responsible Person’s duty to “must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions he needs to take….” So, in summary: by law the employer (or person is control) is the RP and must make the FRA. (of course they can delegate or sub contract the task out, but they remain the RP) The SHP article goes on to say “The RRO requires that the role of the risk assessor must be undertaken by a competent person” . No it doesn’t. I have already established that it’s the RP who must make the FRA. Nowhere in the RRO does it state that he (the RP) must be competent. I accept that in the real world, the risk assessor must be competent in order to produce a suitable and sufficient FRA. That is not my argument. My concern is that if IOSH’s magazine is going to provide technical/legal information, it must be 100% accurate with the details it provides about that law. In this case, I am unsure whether they’ve achieved that goal as the article is, in my view, occasionally 'aspirational/advisory' rather than legally correct.

Sorry RK, I wasn't aware that you had already posted about this. My concern is that I would assume that many who read the magazine will keep back copies, using them as reference material if the need arises. So from that perspective, this article falls rather short of the standard that I would expect IOSH to publish. Maybe somebody from IOSH would like to reply via this forum?????

Second point - answered by the first answer. Two for the price of one, not bad eh? I haven't read the article but will when I can get to it. I think the point has been missed due to the way the introduction is worded. It starts off by saying it is written to provide guidance for a responsible person etc. etc. Then goes on to say if you are unable to apply the guidance you should seek expert advice from a competent person. Two points there - what is an expert if not competent. Competent person - this indicates to me that the fra should be caried out by a competent person in the first instance or if not competent then get someone that is.

The rro does not require a Landlord to appoint a RP. Where did you get that one from?

Message received and understood - thanks Heather. Just goes some way to proving the point being made by messeyshaw.