I would say your MD has the right to ban smoking throughout but that may well drive the smokers "underground", furtive puffs out of site with the attendant increased fire risk from discarded, still burning, dog ends. I think a strongly worded notice to all about the abuse/misuse of your current facilities may help, especially if the notice makes it clear that continued irresponsible behaviour will result in an immediate company-wide ban being introduced, but heed the point above! You say the fire service had to attend to extinguish a fire, this makes me think that perhaps siting of the smoking facilities had not been properly thought out through a fire risk assesment. Surely any smoking facility, by its' very nature needs to sited such that a fire is highly unlikely to be started?

Try http://www.morethanbusin...Managing-the-Smoking-Ban

Thank you very much for your ideas and links - interesting to hear a smoker be so positive on a ban!!! See we are a good bunch!!!

Don't get me wrong but on what groundsd has your MD stated he wants a ban on smoking? Is it on safety/health grounds or just a complete ban. It is important to remember the reason for the ban, is on safety grounds or just because he wants smoking stopped. If the first then you can impose a ban on smoking based on the need to reduce fire risk and improve the safety and well being of the employees as a whole (rather thin base though and would take some convincing for many), If it is the second then it is not a health and safety issue but an employee relations problem so why is the HR manager not involved?