Contribution by: David Bridson

Comment by: David Bridson

Focus area: Fire safety regulation

Regulator concerned: Fire safety (Fire Authority)

Comment:
The Inspector was not interested in helping us to achieve compliance merely stating that it was our responsibility to be compliant and his job to make sure we were. He was unhelpful and has insisted on expensive and impractical measures being taken to reduce fire risks that other fire professionals we have consulted consider to be negligible. For example, the inspector insisted that a 4-slice electric toaster on a worktop 1m above ground level was an ignition risk to the wooden ceiling 6.4m above the ground. This incident happened during what the Inspector termed our “Annual Fire Safety Audit” despite this being the first such visit by a Fire Inspector in the 10 years that the business has been trading.