Meet the Business Fire Safety team
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service employ around 50 people within it's Protection team to provide advice and support to the business and commercial sector.
The primary role of the Protection department is to ensure that the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is enforced in non-domestic premises, commercial premises and common parts of domestic premises across Essex.
The Protection department works proactively to promote fire safety within Essex, our Inspecting Officers do this by conducting fire safety audits to assess compliance with the relevant legislation. The premises they visit, and the regularity of visits, is all determined by our Risk Based Inspection Programme.
Meet our teams
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service is committed to working with the business community to reduce the number of deliberate and accidental fires in commercial premises across Essex.
To help this, we have a dedicated Business Engagement Team who provide local businesses with advice and support. This enables business owners, managers and other building occupiers to comply with their statutory duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
We're committed to simplifying fire safety to help keep businesses safe from fire.
Get in touch with the Business Engagement Team:
Website: essex-fire.gov.uk/business
Email: business.safety@essex-fire.gov.uk
Sign up to our Business Newsletter: essex-fire.gov.uk/sign-up
We have a dedicated Fire Safety Officer to provide advice and support to our rural and farm businesses in Essex. Oliver Everott is our Rural Engagement Officer and comes from a farming background so has lots of knowledge of the farming industry. Ollie grew up on a dairy farm and has worked as a gamekeeper, deer keeper and a farm manager in charge of livestock and arable farms.
Contact Ollie:
The Fire Investigation Team aim to tackle fire-related crime in our county. Every fire attended by ECFRS is examined by the responding fire crews to establish the most likely cause. However, when there is the need for a more detailed investigation we have a dedicated team of fire investigators who examine the causes of a fire and help to identify dangerous products and practices.
In cases where the cause of a fire is thought to be suspicious or deliberate, Fire Investigation Officers will work to analyse evidence from the scene and associated enquires to assist the Police in prosecuting those responsible. Members of the Fire Investigation Team are often called upon to provide evidence regarding the origin and cause of a fire to the Coroner and criminal or civil courts.
Fizz - Fire Investigation Dog
Fizz is a key member of our Fire Investigation Team. She can identify up to 30 flammable substances, many of which are odourless to humans. Fizz will be called to attend the scene of a deliberate fires, alongside her handler Graham Currie. Thanks to Fizz and her exceptional skills, we have been able to find more evidence and secure more convictions for arsons, which is vital to our fight to prevent further deliberate fires.
Fizz Fun Facts:
- Fizz can search up to 350 times faster than a human
- Fizz can cover 1,000sq in 25 minutes. It would take several days for a human search team
- Fizz has more than 100 million scent receptors up her nose compared to 6 million for humans
- Fizz's part of the brain for analysing the scents is 40% larger than a humans
The Service has a team specially tasked with auditing all the high-rise residential buildings in Essex. The audits are cruicial to ensure compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (as amended) and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations, which came into force in January 2023 as result of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire.
The team, who are working closely with the fire service’s appointed Barrister, is led by Station Manager Tim Rickard.
Tim said:
“The new legislations put additional duties on the responsible persons of high-rise residential buildings, including the requirement for them to share information on the design of the external walls, floor plans and a single-page building plan. They’re also required to notify us if they have a fault with a lift for use by firefighters, evacuation lift, essential and key fire-fighting equipment which cannot be rectified within a 24-hour period from the time of discovery. .
“If we find a building that is non-complaint, then action can be taken to address the fire safety deficiencies. This may be in form of education, non-statutory notification of deficiencies, enforcement notice (Article 30) or if the fire safety deficiency is so sever an Article 31 - Prohibition Notice”.
Recently, the fire service identified a building in Colchester that didn’t comply with the legislations and issued an Article 31 – Prohibition Notice. Due to the severity of the fire safety concerns and the risk to life the building was also fully decanted and will not be occupied again until it is deemed safe.
Tim added:
“All the work we’re doing is designed to make high-rise residents safer in their homes and keep our firefighters safe should they need to respond in the event of a fire. We’re asking those responsible for high-rise buildings to engage with us and share their floor plans and external wall reports.
“We’ve created a dedicated page on our website to submit the documents and have lots of supporting guidance. Go to our website: www.essex-fire.gov.uk/fire-safety-regulations-2022