The LWF Blog

Fire Safety for Facilities Management Personnel – Fire Safety Management – Part 296

March 24, 2025 12:11 pm

Lawrence Webster Forrest (LWF) is a specialist fire engineering and fire risk management consultancy whose aim is to give information on best practice in fire safety for facilities management personnel through this blog series. In part 295, LWF looked at the areas to be assessed when considering the effectiveness of fire safety management in an organisation. In part 296, we continue to discuss effective housekeeping and how it contributes to fire safety in an organisation.

Insurance companies assess and report on housekeeping as a part of their reports produced by loss-control surveyors. The views expressed will provide the insurance underwriter with an indication of management standards, which may also appear as a separate item in the same report. When assessing potential risk, management standards are considered a good indicator of the level of risk and notably good (or bad) housekeeping may actually affect the insurance premiums charged.

The standards of housekeeping in an organisation are significant in most areas of fire safety, particularly in fire prevention. Typical instances of bad practice in hazard control might be rubbish stored close to buildings, electrical appliance leads trailing across floors, item storage close to light fittings, kitchen grease build-up etc. All these elements, if neglected, can increase the potential for a fire to start.

Bad housekeeping methods can also affect fire development. A fire starting in a neatly stacked pile of wooden pallets, without surrounding detritus, is likely to be spotted and dealt with before the fire has spread to adjacent materials. A similarly sized heap of pallets with adjacent flammable materials means that a fire could spread over a much larger area and grow at an increased rate.

A lack of effective housekeeping can impede fire protection measures installed to limit threat, injury and damage caused by fire. An example of how this can manifest is when escape routes and fire exits are blocked by goods or rubbish, or where emergency lighting or signage is obstructed.

For instance, a corridor with goods piled at the side(s) may be passable in normal conditions by one careful employee, but in a fire situation, visibility could be reduced, the goods/rubbish may begin to smoulder or fall and the safety of the exit route is negated. Goods/rubbish should never be stored in passageways and fire exits and routes should not be obstructed.

In part 297 of this series, LWF will continue to discuss effective housekeeping and the ways in which a lack of it can cause issues to fire safety. In the meantime, if you have any queries about your own facilities or wish to discuss this blog series, please contact LWF on freephone 0800 410 1130.

Lawrence Webster Forrest is a fire engineering consultancy based in Surrey with over 35 years’ experience, which provides a wide range of consultancy services to professionals involved in the design, development and construction and operation of buildings.

 

While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information.