It's 3pm on a freezing December afternoon and your fire alarm operates. Your business in in a city centre so 85% of staff & customers use public transport to reach you. Some of your staff, a few customers and three visitors leave immediately, but without the necessary winter outer clothing. They mill about at the assembly point as none has a vehicle or anywhere to shelter. You bring this small group inside the reception to keep warm. However, the incident escalates and demands a full evacuation. Later you learn that it's not possible for anyone to get back in today. Question: You've provided shelter in the initial stages to those in need, but cannot do so now that there's a complete evacuation of your business which is to last for 12+ hours. Is there any duty of care to those relevant persons who have been evacuated in regards to inclement weather?? The RR(FS)O 2005 only requires the responsible person to ensure the safety of persons in respect of harm caused by fire. So what legislation (if any) applies to those evacuated in freezing/wet weather - particularly non staff- in regards for duty of care provisions???

I suspect that this scenario will have been considered by very few businesses. Yes there is a duty of care owed and this would in my opinion extend to providing protection from the elements. How this duty would be discharged is rightly something to be considered under a contingency plan and would depend on a variety of factors including age/ability of personnel, numbers involved, season/weather. I suspect that the person who raises this issue in a business continuity meeting is likely to get scornful comments at most times of the year but maybe tomorrow would receive a more interested hearing!

12 + hours is not an evacuation in an average city its an abandonment and as others have stated the best fire RA's will have accounted for this - however most of us would have missed the point noted in a day to day office type situation in a city. Additionally people do not dress for winter in this country so they may be standing at an assembly point in a summer skirt / trouser etc

This is being over analysed in my opinion. Keep things simple. Once it becomes clear that you are not going to be returning to your place of work, the management would release all the staff apart from their crisis management team (whether formally appointed or not). The crisis management team then decamp to a local hotel or nearby friendly business and set up a base of operations there.

stuff4blokes - Point taken but I still maintain common sense would prevail. Decamp to nearby pub or hotel for warmth. for a major event preventing re-entry to building, it is likely the emergency services would be in attendance. They would provide blankets etc. Provision of hot drinks from local coffee shops, cafes etc. somebody would be carrying a wallet. Arrange for taxis to transport people home and charge to company or card. Those without house keys would stay at friends. Staff and managers would manage these arrangements on the day - it is not the sort of thing I feel you can plan in advance. Each member of staff will have their own requirements / responses and to impose a company wide rule would likely fail.

messyshaw, I bet if it was raining they would have grabbed their outdoor clothes!

Thank for everyone's ideas. All have their own merit and fit certain scenarios. However, not all circumstances are easy. Consider a building - again in a city centre where several hundred staff work overnight. Again, they may arrive at the assembly point with insufficient clothing if they evacuated from a location away from their usual work location and didn't get a chance to grab their coat. At 03:00 there are not many suitable locations to house several hundred people. Few hotels would be interested to assist for a bog standard evacuation. Cab journeys for hundreds? For those who think this is unlikely, there are numerous buildings which operate with large numbers of people 24/7, so it is not far fetched. Neither is the thought of an evacuation to last 60 - 90 minutes (with shirt-sleeved staff huddled in the rain/cold) before even the smallest incident to be dealt with. There's lots of talk about duty of care - but under what legislation?

I have read with interest some of the postings added today, and quite frankly they are simply histeria. After the intitial evacuation of the building to a place of safety the emergency as far as fire is concerned is under control. There then needs to be an assessment of how long the situation will last, if it is ongoing other arrangements need to be taken to move people to a secure location to prevent any other hazards becoming a reality. This could mean sending people home or locating them in another building, both options need some organisation as some people will not have facilities to travel home (money etc) or clothing to protect them from the cold. All these should be catered for in a disaster recovery plan. If your organisation has no disaster recovery arrangements in place I suggest you ask your manager about how such a crisis wil be managed from a staff safety point of view.