Understanding the role of a duty holder in fire safety
A Duty holder or is someone who has control over the premises. Their role is to ensure that the property remains safe for all of its occupants. To do this, a duty holder must take fire safety, building safety, and workplace safety into account.
Who are the duty holders in a workplace?
In a workplace, the duty holders will usually be the employer, who is responsible for the safety of their employees. The landlord or building owner, who is responsible for common areas and hallways in buildings with multiple occupants. The facilities manager, who may have control over the fire safety systems due to their contract. Or an occupier, who has control over their specific space within a commercial unit.
The difference between a responsible person and a duty holder
The difference between a responsible person and a duty holder is quite simple. A responsible person is specifically responsible for fire safety as defined in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Every non-domestic building must have at least one responsible person to ensure that fire safety measures are implemented and maintained.
A duty holder is a more general term for someone that has a level of control of a building or part of a building, which obliges them to take on a legal duty of care. Rather than having responsibility for an entire site’s safety, a duty holder is responsible for the specific areas under their control.
While there is some overlap between duty holders and a responsible person, a business can have multiple duty holders that have no responsibility for a building’s fire safety.
Legal responsibilities and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
While the responsible person takes sole responsibility and legal accountability for a building’s fire safety, under the 2005 Fire Safety Order, this does not exempt duty holders from shouldering some responsibility.
A duty holder has the legal obligation to share information with the responsible person, to ensure that a building is fully fire safety compliant. Duty holders cannot manage safety in disconnected silos. The law requires a whole building approach.
Common pain points for fire safety duty holders
When it comes to managing the fire safety of a commercial property, there are common pain points that the majority of duty holders have to contend with.
The risk of manual record-keeping and siloed data
When it comes to fire safety compliance, manual record-keeping is no longer good enough. It opens the door for human error which can lead to non-compliance, and can become a very time consuming task when applied across multiple sites within a property portfolio.
Siloed data provides further risk of non-compliance, due to information from alarm events, and audit trails having to be collated into a central report. This can result in compliance gaps, where the required information is incorrect, lost, or incomplete.
Managing compliance across multiple sites and complex portfolios
The more sites that a portfolio holds, the more complex its fire safety information becomes. This makes fire safety compliance tasks much more difficult to handle via manual processes and siloed data. There is even more information that can be missed or incorrectly reported, with each site providing its own potential issues and non-compliance risks.
For complex fire safety compliance sites like this, it’s better to work smarter rather than working harder.
How Drax Technology empowers duty holders with intelligent systems
Drax Technology is designed specifically to monitor fire safety systems across multiple sites, and to make the lives of duty holders and responsible persons easier.
Centralised alarm management and real-time data insights
Instead of using siloed systems that require separate site visits to record fire safety reports, Drax Technology provides duty holders with a centralised alarm management system that offers a full overview of all fire safety assets across a portfolio in one easy to use dashboard.
The dashboard provides the real-time status of each fire safety asset across a portfolio, insights into potential faults that may be developing, and instant alarm alerts with detailed location and emergency information.
Automating compliance testing and digital audit trails
Our fire compliance monitoring system automatically creates digital audit trails of any alarm event that occurs throughout a company’s property portfolio. This includes genuine fire events as well as false alarms.
It allows you to replace a traditional logbook that must be updated each time that an alert takes place, with a digital logbook that updates automatically and can be provided to regulators with ease.
H4: Proactive maintenance and early risk detection
By taking an ‘always on’ approach with Drax Technology, you can approach fire safety compliance proactively rather than reactively. Our system allows you to catch potential faults in real-time, identify where they are and how they can be remedied, and provide targeted remedial maintenance to remedy a potential fault before it can become a serious problem.
By taking this proactive approach to fire safety compliance, you can move from having to deal with false fire alarms and report on them, to catching issues that may cause a false alarm and preventing them.
Moving from reactive to proactive building safety
If you want to move from reactive building safety that requires numerous manual reports and has increased risk of non-compliance, Drax technology is the partner for you.
Our fire safety monitoring software will make your compliance tasks easier, remove the need for manual reports, and ultimately make your building a safer place to be in.
If you’re interested in improving your building’s fire safety, while making your life easier, book a demo today.
FAQs about duty holders
Who is the 'Responsible Person' for fire safety?
The Responsible Person for fire safety is typically the employer, owner, or occupier who has control over the premises.
Can there be more than one duty holder?
Yes, buildings with multiple businesses or landlords may have several RPs and duty holders who must cooperate to ensure safety.
What are the consequences of non-compliance for a duty holder?
Failure can lead to enforcement action, unsatisfactory audit ratings, and serious safety risks that cannot be proven in court without auditable digital records.
How does digital monitoring help a duty holder?
It replaces manual logs with automated, real-time proof of testing and maintenance, ensuring nothing is missed or forgotten.
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