I am currently reviewing my organisations fire H&S policy. We are a large organisations with over 4000 employees, and have various assets throughout the country, which vary in size and the number of personnel working at them can also vary on a daily basis due to the organisations agile and hybrid working arrangement.

For our medium/smaller offices and depots, only 3 or 4 employees may be working from there when they wish to do so, none of whom may be trained fire wardens.  Therefore my query is in realtion to the presence of fire wardens at such assets and what the legal requirement is for the presence of fire wardens in these circumstances?  I know an agile working arrangement does not make the legal requirement to have competent persons to assist with fire preventative and protection measures as required under the fire safety regs 2006, but more wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences to this and what their solution was?  With the change in SFRS responding to alarms only when a fire is confirmed, this also raises the question around who safely re-enters a building to investigate if there is an actual fire or if it is a false alarm.

For our bigger offices which have a workplace services presence Mon-Friday, the process is fairly straightforward.  An alarm would sounds, the premises would be evacuated and workplace services would assume the role of fire wardens and carry out the duties as required.

Any comments/assistance is greatly appreciated.