quote=fiesta] We did employ a signing in and out system until last year and it was me that did away with it because the sheet was never an accurate reflection of who was in or out. No amount of explaining & reasoning to staff, or indeed jumping up and down and stamping ones feet will ensure that such a sheet will always be used by all staff and visitors all the time. Andy

We have a sign in and out book for any one other than staff ,all staff are on a time sheet system ,so that we know who is on shift at any given time .We only have around 30 people in the building at any given time including any clients (18 of those).I found that disciplinary action was needed at first but staff and visitors some came on board ,Reps and the like told if they dont fill in the book we would use a company that would (all ways found hurting the pockets woks wonders) Kev

At the risk of having my head chewed off I would say that the problem is more likely to be around the 'competence' of the Fire Officer who audited your premises rather than your evacuation procedures. In my experience the Fire & Rescue service have a very poor understanding of the application of fire safety in the workplace. I work for a PCT and our Community Services (Districts Nurses, Health Visitors, Podiatrist etc) are in and out of several different premises during a normal working day. A retired Senior Officer from the Fire & Rescue Service has at various times informed the PCT that: It is a statutory requirement to carry out a roll call - People in wheelchairs should be left in the 'Refuge Areas' to await the Fire & Rescue Service - You can drag people down staircases as it will not matter if they get injured as you are saving their life so you are not liable - PAT is a legal requirement -If you do not have designated Fire Marshalls the Fire & Rescue Service will prosecute you. I will now don my hard hat and make my way to the fall out shelter

O'Donnell54548 pop your head up over the parapet .We have been told a similar thing by our fire inspector and as I work in a mental health unit it can be very difficult to get every one from their rooms .So a roll call works best for us but you have to make sure any visitors know the importance of the signing in book Kev

You can take your hard hat off as far as i am concerned, you hit the nail right on the head. I don't know if it is lack of training or bitterness at losing their cushy little job for firemen too old to be in the field so assigned to building inspection and issuing Fire Certificates. I've had Fire Service people say to me that they believe that only a trained fire fighter knows enough to do a risk assessment, this is a little like looking to the Police for legal advice! One over-jealous inspector issued an improvement notice to have a fire exit sign changed as it was over the exit but pointed left (an obvious dead end), my client had only used it because they had wanted to enhance the signage, the exit was obvious. Outcome I took it down and they could do nothing. At one meeting the introductory phase was nothing more than him telling us about his powers to close us down if he didn't like what he saw, not exactly setting the scene for an open discussion. We had a two hours "Fire Inspection" which consisted of 15 minutes inspecting the site and the rest of the time him tellings us what he thought we should do, e.g. criticising the Risk Assessment Format (I used the format given in the guidance), etc. On another occasion they told us that it was our responsibility to write to every occupier within 200m of the site to warn them that we had Acetylene on site and that in the event of a Fire they would be evacuated for up to 24 hours, strangely none of the other sites (including several metal working companies) ever delivered a similar warning to us. Further to this they wanted us to develop an evacuation plan for the whole area (call each site and tell them we had a fire and they may have to evacuate). The whole thing was surreal. I'm afraid they are not great at enforcement, and my advice to their suggestion that you need to have a roll call would be to politely ignore it. It is your obligation to assess the risk and to put in place procedures that are appropriate, roll call just aren't practical although they give a nice warm feeling. I always look at it from the point of view that with a sweep I can tell the Fire Service that I have checked certain areas and they "were" clear, that I have not checked other areas. That way they can prioritise based on the information they have. Would you ever be 100% certain that the building is empty based on a Roll Call? Unless 100% they are worthless. I also looked into using a swipe card readout but it wasn't practical, 15 minutes to get a print out then probably another hour to reconcile the list with who is at the assembly point, etc. I was involved in a real fire in Basingstoke many years ago, within 7 minutes of the alarm sounding the whole of the 1st floor was ablaze and within an hour the building was nothing more than a burned out shell, and that building had sprinklers. You don't have long enough to implement elaborate procedures, great for drills but useless in a fire, keep it simple! Another point, who in your businesses are trained to evacuate wheelchair users and have you assessed the risk of the Manual Handling task, leave it to the experts. Am I the only one who was deeply worried by the recent appeal by Next Oxford Street who were prosecuted and heavily fined for not having procedures deemed adequate regardless of the fact that they evacuated the building and no-one was injured? I would argue that the fact that they successfully evacuated the Store then there procedures were adequate whilst not pretty.

Paul, I assume you mean New Look not Next? The starting point for the fine in the original trial was set at £600k but the original trial judge deemd £400k to be sufficient on the grounds that no-one was injured. When you read about the incident though it's pretty amazing that no-one WAS injured... For those not familiar with the incident: http://www.thisislondon....er-oxford-street-fire.do http://www.info4fire.com...00-000-fine-for-new-look

Paul H11 Despite being an ex fire safety inspecting officer, I agreed with all of your post about the competence and attitude of (some) IOs - until you got to the bit about New Look. Yes, as an equal opportunity employer, the fire service have their fair share of over zealous jobsworths. Training (from my ex employer) was poor, and it was often the case that the senior supervisory managers had no fire safety experience, but still had to sign notices and lead teams! Where you let yourself down is linking incompetence with the New Look prosecution. If read the details of the case. I have seen all of the LFB's papers - and can tell you it was luck and not procedure that resulted in no injuries or deaths at this fire. They were ill prepared and acting illegally. Are you saying that a motorist with no tax, MOT and insurance shouldn't be nicked if they've not had a crash? That's ludicrous. It's a shame as your post was doing so well. But by making such ill informed and generalised comments about IOs and plainly wrong comments about New Look - and even getting the shop's name wrong - is evidence surely, that there people who demonstrate incompetence and attitude problems in all fields of business - not just in the fire service.