This Guide will help you to decide the identity of the Responsible Person(s) at any premises. In some cases, there might be more than one Responsible Person.
In these circumstances, the Responsible Person must co-operate with each other to co-ordinate their fire safety measures in order to ensure compliance with fire safety legislation.
In the context of fire safety legislation and this guide, a ‘person’ will commonly be an organisation, such as a limited company, rather than a living person. The organisation will then depend on managers and employees to make sure that it complies with its duties under fire safety legislation.
It is very rare a contract will make an employee responsible for ‘maintaining fire safety systems, this will be carried out by external contractors (under a contract which will give them a level of responsibility under the law) who are competent (this is key). If your contract of employment makes you responsible for fire safety (e.g. you are the company fire safety manager) or for certain aspects of fire safety (e.g. testing of fire protection systems where competent), you, as well as the organisation, may be a duty holder. More generally, under fire safety legislation, all employees in a workplace must take reasonable care for their own safety and the safety of other people who could be affected by things they do or do not do.