How many Fire Wardens do I need?

Posted 9 years ago

How many fire wardens should there be in your workplace?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive answer to this, it largely depends on the size and layout of your premises. You need to conduct risk assessments to assess the risk level of how many people are in your building and if your building is a low/medium or high-risk building. Throughout our experience of talking with thousands of organisations, the general guidance is 1 Fire Warden for every 10 members of staff but this can depend if you are a high/medium or low-risk business. It is then sensible for each Fire Warden to have a deputy in case of absence.

In order to determine the number of Fire Wardens required to satisfy your legal health and safety requirements, you must first determine how many ‘areas’ your workplace contains. There are three general rules for working out how many areas your workplace can be divided into:

Example of how many fire wardens are required in your workplace

A diagram explaining how many fire wardens you may need in a workplace

When asking the question, how many fire wardens do I need? You should refer back to this infographic. Let’s go through step by step:

Different hazards – Significant areas of your premises need to be divided when the degree of the hazard varies (This means you need to separate the main warehouse from your office space)
The 60 second rule – Areas should be divided if it takes longer than 60 seconds to travel on foot between them (Meaning it should take less than 60 seconds to go from one office to another)
Different floors – Areas on different floors need to be divided into your emergency plan as the 60-second rule applies here to leave the building.
It is advised to have a fire warden in each divided section of your building but this can depend on the risk and how many employees you have.

You must also take into consideration how many designated fire assembly points your business has; as this will also have an impact on the number of fire wardens necessary to ensure complete site safety awareness. In order to make sure your business is covered, a Fire Warden should be present in each area, for each shift and assembly point at all times.

How to prevent fires in the workplace

Fire wardens are responsible for fire safety in your workplace, they will have all the information about when the fire alarms were last tested and any procedures around workplace fire evacuations. However, everyone can benefit from general fire safety awareness to stop fires in the workplace

How to prevent fires in the workplace?

Here are 10 useful fire safety tips to help prevent fire in the workplace:

Provide fire safety training for staff (this is a legal requirement!) and carry out fire drills regularly.
Fire risk assessments need to be carried out annually and if there are any changes in the building itself too.
Aim to test your fire alarms weekly.
Carry out checks of the building e.g. escape routes, and make sure no escape routes are blocked.
You should have a sufficient emergency plan in place with procedures to evacuate a building during a fire.
Any type of checks, training or drills should be recorded in a safety book.
Emergency lights should be fully functioning and tested regularly to test that they are working.
Fire doors should not be held open and should not be damaged rendering them ineffective.
Fire action notices should be near to call points.
Emergency exit signs should be visible and illuminated.

Upskill your employees to be fire safe

Completing a Fire Risk Assessment will point out exactly how many Wardens or Marshals are required to make your workplace fire safe. It makes sense to ensure you have ample cover.

Our IOSH and RoSPA approved & CPD accredited Fire Warden Training helps you work towards compliance with the Fire Safety Order 2005 and other current legislation. It covers, your responsibilities, the correct fire extinguishers to use and fire prevention and evacuation. However, it is important to note that all of your employees can benefit from our Fire Safety awareness training.