After a recent visit from the local Fire Authority we've been told that our employee training under article 21 isn't frequent enough. The article states training should be appropriate and on a regular basis. We currently train every 24 months and provide information in numerous ways. The Authority tell us we should train at least every 12 months on what to do in the event of a fire.

We can and obviously will increase the frequency to affirm the employees knowledge and also appease the authority, my question is; What do other posters do to meet these requirements?

I agree that it all depends upon the fire risk assessment - the main findings etc. However that will all depend on the opinion of the fire risk assessor.

My view is for evacuation training it should be every 6 months, or at least once per year, other training i.e. extinguisher use, fire warden etc. could be a longer period.

Fire wardens could just review their training with them involved, extinguisher use could be when the service engineer arrives on site, (once per year).

It does not just depend on time, the individuals should also be taken into account.

Blue,

The actual wording in the RRO (21,2(b)) is that training... must be repeated periodically where appropriate. It does not specify and frequency. As other psosts have said your risk assessment would / should determine what is appropriate.

You specifically mention training in what to do in the event of a fire. I think for most business this can easily be achieved by a reminder on the actions during a fire drill. If this is recorded then job done (but don't forget any non attendees). We do this every six months, do a fire drill report and communciate via team meetings so everyone is covered and this seems to work well. Sounds like your authority would be ahppy you doing this once a year?

We have recently updated our FRA and are considering inviting the local Brigade to come and review (setting my self up for a fall ;)).

I'm not sure that anyone above has really addressed the issue properly.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your training? How do you initiate your evacuation drills?
Ask a random selection of staff to tell you what they would do if they discovered a fire. If you ask the question and 100% of the respondents answer correctly then you know you are pretty much there if less than 80% answer correctly then you have a training need. The fire officer should have done the same thing before telling you that your training frequency was insufficient. But try the same thing again when you initiate an evacuation drill except tell a member of staff that they have discovered the fire and that they are to respond in accordance with their instructions. They should then initiate the alarm which starts your evacuation drill. Time them from the moment you inform them that they have discovered the fire and tell them they they are being timed (this adds a little pressure although not quite the same as if they really did discover a fire).

In my experience I rarely find 100% of respondents answer correctly, I may find some workplaces where the response is better than 80% but most are less. When I initiate evacuation drills the response is generally poor. I would say less than 80% know where their nearest manual call point is.....even worse some think the green box is the manual call point! Some think they should ring security first, some think they should phone their line manager.

If everything goes right and you have recorded it in your fire risk assessment then I think you have every right to go back to your fire officer and ask him (or her) on what basis are they telling you to increase the frequency of your training, if however, the correct response rate is less than 80% then the fire officer may be correct.

I think Shaun puts it very well. It's not about the frequency of training - you could train some people every week and they still wouldn't get it right when the time came! You need to be able to show that people have remembered enough of their training to understand what to do in a fire, how to react when the alarm sounds and how to leave safely. If you have individuals with specific roles - fire wardens, fire fighting team, fire co-ordinator, etc then they need extra training to fulfill those roles.

Where the procedures are straightforward then I don't see the need to simply repeat training every six months as long as you have identified in your RA what you do, why you do it and how you prove that this is adequate. I would agree with those above who have said they run regular drills - there is nothing like actually DOING a drill to prove if your staff know what to do. We used to vary the drill. Often you find staff will use the main front door to exit since that's what they do every day. In most of our buildings we would have someone stand at the access to the main exit and tell everyone it was blocked. This way we forced people to use alternative exit routes and in time this became their regular practice in drills and so considerably speeded up the evacuation times.

Another method to vary training was to give everyone a trainign session every 24 months (as the OP says) but then back it up after 12 months with a quiz that went to all staff. Anyone who didn't return the quiz or who didn't get 80% of the answers right was then invited to a refresher training session. Our local FRS were satisified with that as adequate in a normal risk industrial premises.

I don't disagree with your last post Chris, but previously you said "surely it should be 100% that know the correct procedures". Now which is it? We should expect everyone to know everything they were taught or we shouldn't? ;)