BAFE

Current fire protection legislation across the UK requires property managers of all non-residential premises to have adequate fire protection. It is their responsibility to ensure that there is an adequate, updated fire risk assessment and that all aspects of the requirements are carried out competently. To demonstrate that the responsible person (duty holder in Scotland) has met their obligations, many public authorities and commercial organisations now insist that their fire protection services are carried out by a company that has been third party certificated. Many now specify that providers are BAFE registered.

BAFE is the independent third party certification, registration body for the fire protection industry. We develop schemes for UKAS accredited certification bodies to assess and approve companies to recognised standards. There are now more than 1100 BAFE registered companies across the UK. Our aim is to support property managers to ensure that they get quality fire protection for their premises, staff and service users.

BAFE has recently launched a UKAS accredited scheme for Companies who carry out Fire Risk Assessments (SP205) which is a vital part of meeting your obligations under fire legislation. The scheme considers the competence of the individual assessors as well as the quality requirements for the organisation. There are a growing number of companies registering to the scheme, throughout the UK.  If you are looking for the supply and maintenance of portable extinguishers, look for one of the 330 Companies accredited to BAFE Schemes SP101/ST104.

Companies are certificated to ISO9001 and all of their technicians are assessed by BAFE for initial and ongoing competence.  For installing or maintaining fire alarm systems Companies should hold BAFE modular SP203-1 scheme approval. This scheme includes design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of fire detection systems and also requires that all equipment used is third party certificated. The scheme now has over 700 registered companies.

Our Emergency Lighting scheme (SP203-4) sets out the standards and staff competence criteria to be met. It is modular as with the fire alarm scheme and is achieving growing recognition from end users.

There are a range of other BAFE schemes covering particular sectors of the fire protection industry and details can be found on the BAFE website, along with a complete search facility to find registered companies in your area.