Welcome to the British Fire Consortium Website

The British Fire Consortium would like to welcome you to our Web Site.

The primary aims of the BFC are maintain high quality technical standards of our members and to actively encourage all our members to obtain third party accreditation to ISO 9001 or equivalent approval bodies recognised by the European co-operation for Accreditation (EA).

Our members supply quality products and highly professional servicing for many aspects of fire prevention and fire protection. Products and servicing will include, extinguishers, signage, alarms, sprinklers, dry risers, emergency lighting and risk assessment together with many additional fire safety products.

The BFC promote best practice within the fire protection and fire prevention industry through representation with official UK and European bodies together with other relevant industry agencies, institutions and associations. The BFC provide technical advice and approved training for members and hold regular meetings, enabling the opportunities for members to exchange ideas, discuss issues and trends facing our industry today.

2013 Training Diary Now Avalible

Next years diary is now avalible for you to plan your training needs Click Here

NEWS Suitability of fire risk assessments for exisiting hotel bedroom fire doors

Tyco Update & New Extinguisher Failure Notice

Click Here for all the latest news as of 02-04-2012

BS5306-8

The long awaited draft of BS 5306 Part 8 is now out for public comment. Please download and study the document. If you have any comments good or bad please send them to Graham Newman via secretary@britishfireconsortium.org.uk so that the BFC can present an association comment, collating all your comments together. It is better to do it this way rather than the method suggested in the document. You only have 2 months to make any comments or the document will be adopted as the standard to replace the exisitng Part 8

Click Here To Download

The Fire Risk Assessment Competency Council has published a document called "Competency Criteria for Fire Risk Assessors".

The document outlines the competency levels for Fire Risk Assessores and could be used by companies and individuals. Fire risk assessor are expected to have adequate knowledge of the following topics:-

• The assessment of risk from fire (appendix A)
• Applicable legislation (appendix B)
• Appropriate guidance (appendix C)
• Behaviour of fire in premises (appendix D)
• Effects of fire on people and behaviour of people in fire situations (appendix E)
• Means of escape (appendix F)
• Fire prevention (appendix G)
• Fire protection (appendix H, includes passive and active)
• Management of fire safety (appendix I)

Specialist training and experience, as well as membership of an appropriate professional association would be essential with third party accreditation as a further option

There has been growing concern relating to the competency of fire risk assessors that provide assessments on a commercial basis. Information from the Fire and Rescue Service suggests that the principle reason for enforcement notices being issued is a failure by the responsible person to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment.

A second document will be published shortly as a guide for Businesses and the Responsible Person to help them to decide how to choose a fire risk assessor if they feel that their own knowledge is not sufficient to carry out the risk assessment themselves.

The British Fire Consortium is a member of the Competency Council and has taken an active part in the production of these documents. We strongly recommend that all our members that offer a Fire risk assessment service ensure that they have achieved the desired level of competency to do so.