How do your insurers feel about it Nigel?

Frank Hallett

OK Nigel - so it's a verbal recommendation following a FS "goodwill" visit then?

You don't identify what sort of premises nor business, so:-

Revisit your FRA and ensure that it is "suitable and sufficient". If your Fire competent person says it's OK, note the advice and incorporate it in future plans. If not, give consideration to upgrading now.

There is no legal restriction on you fitting your own Fire Alarm within the UK that I'm aware of; but you should get an opinion from your premises & fire insurers as to how they feel about it and whether you doing it in-house will affect the cover or premium.

However, if my assumption above is incorrect, there is something else that you haven't shared with us, or which only comes to light once you get your FRA reviewed; you'll have to do something more.

Frank Hallett

Good morning all

Hi msssy - you make a good point about the potential consequences of failing to install to a suitable standard by an external provider; and of course the same principle would be used for internal fitting in similar circumstances.

Also, I cannot disagree with your comment on being competent.

My point is that despite the Fire Services quoting BS???? as a recommendation and citing it as "best practice" when bringing an enforcement action - it has no legal requirement nor exclusivity for using Standards within the UK at this time in this instance. A workplace controller has the option of selecting the standard that they wish [or none at all] and then proving to the enforcer that it is acceptable in the same way as choosing between Building Regs App Doc B and BS 9999.

That means that no enforcer would be able to require compliance to a BS/BSEN for Fire Alarms until after having gone to court and gained a favourable verdict on that case.

Unless we have further info from Nigel on this we cannot provide anything other than general responses to the actual info provided.

Frank Hallett