2020 FIRE KILLS CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED

The Home Office has announced the launched of the Fire Kills campaign for 2020. This campaign has been designed with help from the National Fire Chiefs Council to promote fire safety in the home by raising awareness of common hazards and promoting the use of smoke alarms.

Some key statistics highlighted by the campaign include:

• You are around 8 times more likely to die from a fire if you don’t have a working smoke alarm in your home and in the year to June 2019, 215 people died in fires at home.
• The most common cause of fires in the home were cooking fires for example resulting from something flammable being too close to a cooker. Other common causes included smokers’ materials, candles and faulty electrics.

Full details of the campaign including videos and other home fire safety information can be found at: https://firekills.campaign.gov.uk/

In the workplace employers and those responsible for buildings must carry out and regularly review and revise a fire safety risk assessment. This will involve identifying fire hazards e.g. things that could cause a fire to start (such as sources of heat, sparks and flames) and things that could burn (that is flammable materials) and the people who may be at risk.

Once you have identified fire hazards the next step is to take action to control those risks. This could include steps such as:

• Keeping flammable materials away from sources of ignition
• Maintaining good housekeeping and avoiding build ups of flammable waste
• Having suitable fire fighting equipment and training people how to use it
• Keeping fire exits and escape routes clear of obstructions and clearly signed
• Installing fire detection equipment e.g. smoke alarms, where needed

Where dangerous substances (e.g. petrol, flammable chemicals etc) are used or created (e.g. flammable or explosive concentrations of dusts such as wood or grain) then extra precautions will need to be taken.

Please speak to your normal PIB Risk management contact or get in touch using [email protected]  if you would like to arrange a fire risk assessment for your workplace or have any questions about fire safety.