Training

To ensure customers get the best possible help and advice from our consultants, Assured’s Fire and Safety Surveyors must complete and pass the BFPSA Advanced Fire Alarm Course.

The Course ensures that any Surveyor or Designer of Fire Alarm Systems, is fully conversant with current fire regulations and is competent in the design and specification of all fire systems.

We congratulate Matthew Tolkien, Wayne Floyd, Mark Sturmer and Lisa Ashmore, Assured Fire & Security Surveyors, who recently completed and passed the course!

Questionnaire provides invaluable feedback

Assured Fire & Security value customers opinions, as feedback is invaluable in helping to drive our business forward. To ensure constant evaluation, which is vitally important to improving our business and the service we provide, Assured has developed a new customer questionnaire.

The questionnaire will be mailed out annually and we ask our customers to please complete and return the questionnaire in the FREEPOST envelope provided.

To encourage our customers, Assured is donating £1.50 to the NSPCC for each completed questionnaire returned. So, in addition to helping to improve our business and services, you will also be supporting an extremely worthwhile charity!

Assured sponsor Lowe Group Engineering Golf Day

Rotherham Golf Club at Thrybergh was the venue for this event, despite the fact that the course was unplayable only the day before! Assured sponsored £350 towards the Day and Terry Gormley represented Assured with MD Simon Stokes, who on this occasion was demoted to caddy!

For the successful players, various items of golf equipment were ample reward for their perseverance and there was a chance to win a VW Golf. However, for all participants there was also the opportunity to contribute towards the Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice by buying raffle tickets, which together with a donation from Lowe Group Engineering raised over £1,000 for the charity.

Assured “GO APE”

Assured got up to some real monkey business as staff were recently treated to a fun day out in the trees at our local Go ape Centre! Death slides, Tarzan ropes and climbing through Sherwood forest at some dizzy heights were the order of the day as a way of saying thank you to all our staff for their hard work.

Simon is ‘Hitting the Roof’ to support the NSPCC

After recent business and trekking trips to Borneo, the Alps and the Sudan, Assured’s intrepid Managing Director Simon Stokes is set to travel to the roof of the world!

In March 2008, Simon is going to Nepal to visit the Everest Base Camp. At 5600 metres, Everest Base Camp is the start of the famous assault on the world’s highest mountain; it is higher than any mountain in Europe and higher than most mountains in the world. The trek through the Himalayas, lasting over 15 days, is one of Simon’s lifelong ambitions.

Simon, is funding the trip himself, and his objective is to raise money for The NSPCC, therefore any donations will be gratefully received.

Making a donation is simple visit www.justgiving.com/simonstokes or call Simon on 0845 402 3045.

Fire Safety Law - Compliance is vital to avoid prosecution

Prosecutions continue for those failing to meet their obligations under Fire Safety Law.Hefty fines have been imposed on an Erdington social club for failing to comply and Norwich Magistrates Court imposed a £10,250 fine against a city landlord for breaching safety laws. The owner of a Blackpool hotel was convicted of six breaches of fire safety regulations and ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £9,000.

Following a blaze which saw 125 people evacuated and a further two rescued by aerial ladder, the Loretta Hotel in Llandudno was fined £12,000 plus £6,500 costs,for fire safety breaches. A Nelson mill owner is amongst the latest prosecutions, ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £2,450, for failing to meet fire regulations and a Colchester Restaurateur has recently been fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £15,000 in costs in a prosecution brought by Essex Fire Authority, which has set a new precedent.

To help avoid prosecution it is essential that the Regulatory Reform Order (Fire Safety Law) is conformed to. As part of this the government recommends that only approved contractors are appointed, to carry out fire safety work. These contractors can independently prove competence through schemes such as BAFE (British Approval for Fire Equipment). BAFE is a non profit making organisation, dedicated to improving standards in fire protection and operates independent third party schemes of approval for fire protection systems.

Allianz Cornhill, Norwich Union, Royal & SunAlliance and many other insurers are backing BAFE as part of their requirement to ensure that fire safety systems and services are installed and maintained annually by companies registered with BAFE, or are approved by the Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB).

Assured Fire & Security is BAFE accredited and can prove competence in Fire Safety.
For further information please call 0845 402 3045.

Six Tips When Testing Your Fire Alarm System

In an emergency, your fire alarm system could save lives, property and potentially keep you in business.

As described in our last post, alarms can commonly be tested wrongly, leaving you vulnerable in the event of fire.

Here are some tips we would recommend you follow to ensure your alarm works when you need it:

1. Every week a break glass call point should be operated during normal working hours & the results recorded. A different call point to be tested each week, there is no maximum period for this e.g. 150 call points would take 150 weeks

2. Any occupants should report any poor audibility of sounders

3. Systems with staged evacuation or alert should be run through their full procedure, e.g. - test, alert & evacuation

4. In premises with shift patterns or out of normal working hours then a separate test should be made available once a month

5. Voice alarms should be tested in accordance with BS5839-8

6. Ensure that for monitored systems that the fire alarm & reset signal was received at the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC)

To discuss your fire and security requirements in detail, please contact us or visit us online.

Visit our resources page for independent information relating to fire safety.