One year after the introduction of new fire safety legislation, Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) is warning that its approach to enforcement is to be ‘much more stringent’.
The Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010 came into effect on 15 November last year, bringing a more risk-based approach similar to that of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 in England and Wales.
“In the last year we have been working extremely hard to educate and inform people who are responsible for non-domestic premises about the requirements of the new fire safety legislation and how this affects them,” said chief fire officer for Northern Ireland, Peter Craig.
“As we move into the second year of the legislation, our approach to enforcing the legislation will become much more stringent to help protect our community. We will continue to work with premises owners to provide advice but we will also issue enforcement notices to those premises who repeatedly do not comply with the required fire safety standard, and in the most serious cases of failure to comply, we will pursue prosecution.
NIFRS say they have audited more than 3000 premises across Northern Ireland over the last 12 months.
The new Fire Safety Regulations (NI) 2010 gave effect to EU Health and Safety directives and brought Northern Ireland into line with England, Scotland and Wales.
