A fire action notice answers two moments and nothing else: what to do on discovering a fire, and what to do on hearing the alarm. The words for both are close to standard and every supplier prints them. What is not standard, and what decides whether the notice is any use, is the pair of building specific lines underneath: where the assembly point actually is, and whether the fire and rescue service is called automatically by a monitored alarm or whether somebody in the building has to dial 999. A notice with those left blank is decoration.
What the notice has to tell people
Four things, in the order a person needs them. On discovering a fire: operate the nearest manual call point. On hearing the alarm: leave by the nearest available exit, do not use the lifts, do not stop to collect belongings. Where to go: the assembly point, named as a place somebody can find in the dark and in the rain. Who calls the fire and rescue service: either the alarm is monitored and the call is made for you, or a named role makes it, and the notice should say which. Nothing in the Fire Safety Order prescribes those words, which is exactly why they drift; what the Order requires, in article 15, is that appropriate procedures exist for serious and imminent danger and that they are actually followed.
Where the notice belongs, and how many a building needs
Beside every manual call point, and at final exits, at reading height. The reason is the way a notice is used: it is read once, by somebody who is already committed to an action, so it has to be where that action is taken rather than on a noticeboard in reception. The count follows the call points rather than the rooms, which is why a sign audit walks the call point schedule. One more thing decides whether it can be read at all: a stair that loses its lighting needs the emergency lighting scheme to be doing its part, because an unreadable notice and no notice are the same notice.
The fire action plan behind the notice
The notice is the public summary of something longer. Article 15 requires the responsible person to establish appropriate procedures to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger, and those procedures are the plan: who sweeps which floor, how a person who cannot use the stairs leaves and who helps them, who meets the fire service and with what information, and what happens to a night shift or a contractor nobody inducted. Where five or more people are employed, article 9 requires the significant findings of the risk assessment and the measures taken to be recorded, which in practice means the plan is written down and can be handed over. A notice on the wall with no plan behind it is the visible part of the system rather than the working part, and an enforcing officer can tell the difference in about two questions.
Fire action signage against the four safety sign categories
Fire action notices are text, and the safety sign regulations are mostly about pictograms. The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 set the shapes and colours a sign uses to carry its meaning before anybody reads it: red for fire equipment, green for escape and safe condition, blue for a mandatory action, yellow for warning. A written notice sits beside that system as supplementary information rather than as one of the four categories, which is why its layout varies between suppliers while an exit pictogram does not. What matters is that it does not contradict the pictograms around it. A notice sending people down a route the green signs do not signpost is the defect that gets written up, and it is usually the result of a refurbishment that moved an exit and not the signage.
Fire warden sign boards, and what the law actually asks for
No regulation requires a board naming the fire wardens. Article 15 requires a sufficient number of competent persons to be nominated to implement the evacuation procedures; it says nothing about advertising who they are. A board earns its place where the public is present and a warden has to be findable by somebody who does not know the staff, and earns nothing in a small office where everybody already knows. The risk is that it goes stale: a name left on a wall eighteen months after that person left is worse than no name at all, because an evacuation then pauses for somebody who is not in the building. If the board goes up, it belongs on the same review cycle as the plan.
Questions people ask about fire action notice sign
Is a fire action notice a legal requirement?
Not under that name. The Fire Safety Order requires appropriate procedures for serious and imminent danger and requires people to know what to do; a notice is the customary way of meeting that rather than a duty in itself. An enforcing officer will ask how occupants know what to do, and a notice that names the assembly point and the call arrangement is the shortest honest answer available.
Can a generic fire action notice be downloaded and used?
The standard wording can. The two building specific lines cannot: the assembly point and whether the fire service is called automatically. A downloaded notice carrying blanks, or somebody else's answers, is the commonest fault a signage check finds, and it is the fault that matters, because those are the only two lines a person could not have worked out for themselves.
Where should a fire action notice be fixed?
Beside every manual call point and at final exits, at reading height, and somewhere the light will still reach it if the mains supply has gone. Reception is not the place: the notice is read at the moment of acting, not on the way in.
Does the notice have to name the assembly point?
Nothing prescribes the words, but a notice that does not say where to go leaves the instruction half finished. Where to assemble is the one thing an occupant cannot deduce in the moment, and an assembly point that is only in the written plan is an assembly point most of the building does not know about.
Which fire safety signs uk premises are expected to display?
Nothing prescribes a fixed list. The risk assessment decides which signs a building needs and the 1996 Regulations decide what the ones it uses have to look like. In practice that means escape route and final exit signs wherever the way out is not obvious, location signs for fire equipment, mandatory action signs on fire doors that have to stay shut or stay clear, warning signs where a specific hazard sits, and the written action notice at the call points. The test to apply is whether somebody who has never been in the building before could get out of it using only what is on the walls.
What does a foam extinguisher sign or a co2 extinguisher sign have to show?
The location of that unit, in the red fire equipment category, and by convention the agent so that somebody can find the right one rather than the nearest one. It is worth being clear what the sign is for: it marks the position, and the class rating and the restrictions are printed on the extinguisher itself. Two practical points follow. A sign left behind after a unit has been moved or removed is worse than no sign, because it sends somebody to an empty bracket. And a sign naming an agent that no longer hangs there, which happens whenever a servicing visit swaps a unit type, is the same fault in slower motion.
Sources
- Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 15 (procedures for serious and imminent danger)
- Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9 (risk assessment and recording)
- Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996, regulation 4
- Fire safety in the workplace: your responsibilities (GOV.UK)