These schemes have been around for a while in among health and safety, trading standards, and other local authority enforcement functions. There are currently more than 600 businesses participating in these schemes across 100 local authorities.
A PAS is designed for organisations with premises within, or that operate across, more than one local authority area. A “lead authority” is set up whereby one local authority sets the tone of the enforcement strategy and provides consistent advice to be applied across all of the businesses’ locations.
Under the PAS, the organisation sets up a formal agreement with a lead authority, generally the one where its head office is located. Under the agreement the business typically commits to certain policies and arrangements, its own in-house inspection and auditing programme, and an improvement plan.
The authority, for its part, sets out an inspection plan to cover its intended proactive work with the organisation over a designated period. If inspectors from non-lead authorities visit one of the businesses’ locations they must liaise with the lead authority before taking formal action.
In practice both sides have encountered certain challenges through the schemes. Inspectors, for example, report that they cannot achieve simple improvements locally without jumping through hoops. Businesses on the other hand have complained that non-lead authorities often ignore the agreement.
Section 68 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, which came into force in October 2013, gave a statutory footing to inspection plans formed under these agreements, meaning that non-lead authorities potentially cannot even inspect premises without consent from the lead authority (except in an emergency). Section 67 of ERRA also extended the opportunity to form a PAS to trade associations and franchised businesses. In effect, then, if you run a corner shop which is a trade association member, you can benefit from a consistent approach applied by regulators across similar businesses throughout the country, provided that members of the association sign up to written standards of operation.
In the press release announcing the planned change to offer PASes for fire safety, Business Minister Michael Fallon said: “No enterprise should be held back by confusing or contradictory advice from regulators. Primary Authority is designed to make sure that hard-pressed businesses know what’s expected of them under the law — and receive clear guidance on how to maintain the highest safety standards.”
But I wonder whether contradictory advice is all that common with fire safety issues? (What do our readers find?). The British Retail Consortium has supported the initiative, so maybe it’s a bigger problem than I perceive?
On the positive side, I suppose that a PAS may drive improvement in fire standards — encouraging businesses to agree a strategy on fire safety in exchange for a planned inspection programme.
Viewed from the other viewpoint it’s another scheme operated under the banner of “reducing the burden of regulation on businesses.” But with so many businesses seemingly untouched by their fire safety responsibilities, do we need initiatives which reduce the pressure to conform? Or should all our efforts go into tackling the evidently low standards of fire safety in certain sectors and the consequent risk to life?
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This is so long overdue and i hope will be seen in our profession as a major advance in how we can improve the professionalism in the sector. I for one have already approached one Fire Authority (with my clients permission) to enter the process. Why? Because I am fed up with an inconsistent enforcement approach and I hope this will help us to break down ‘brigadeisms’ (or should we say ‘serviceisms’) and formulate a national approach for national clients. There will be problems but we should work through these to make this work and join the food and hygiene… Read more »
I am not sure what the whole hoopla is about, this arrangement already existed in the RRO where there is the option to create Lead Authorities specifically to address this issue. However having tried to negotiate one of these arrangements with a client who had a number of propertieswover several brigades we finally had to give up. None of the brigades really wanted to take on the task. The one brigade which got closest to it arranged a number of meetings all of which were postponed at short notice. The other issue of conformity throughout the country is even more… Read more »
I’m jumping to a conclusion here, but it sounds as if John540 may be some kind of fire safety advisor to a business that covers multiple fire authority areas. I agree with what he says about inconsistent advice, but if I am right about his job, John540 should be careful about rushing towards a PAS as a solution. During the trial of the PAS scheme in fire safety enforcement, it was said that an advantage of such a scheme was that business would get its fire safety advice directly from the enforcing authority. In other words, business won’t need to… Read more »
I’ve just read the comment from Mike Buckley. Mike, I’m afraid this is a bit more than a sound bite from Government. You are right that it sounds just like the old lead authority scheme that has been around for a while, but there is one important difference. A business could enter a lead authority scheme with a lead fire and rescue service, but these partneships had no legal standing so no other fire and rescue service was obliged to take any notice of any agreements that were made under the partnership. Hence, the problem of CFOs not wanting to… Read more »
Is this now the time to re-visit regionalisation of the fire service in England?
Perhaps then we might get some greater consistency across the whole service.
Of course there is no point in reducing the burden of regulations or standards on businesses when so many lives are at stake. But a clear line must be drawn and it should be made sure that businesses are not overburdened. While it is a good thing on paper to let the businesses do it on their own, they can’t be spared of any standard regulations.
Liaison between non-lead authorities and lead authorities will definitely streamline the whole process. It will spare the businesses of the need to meet differing standards in place at different locations. Under a formal agreement with lead authority they will be committed to enforcing certain standards at their all locations. What will be the actual leverage that this formal agreement gives to lead authority is something to consider though.
We do have national guidance from British Standards Institution that works hand in glove with Primary Authority Schemes. PAS 7: 2013 – Fire Risk Management System Specification. I really do hope that fire and rescue services pick up on the opportunity that is under their noses. We’re certainly keen to deliver FREE seminars on the matter to fire and rescue services. If partner organisations formalise their fire risk management system documentation, and fire and rescue authorities make concessions for UKAS accredited fire risk management system certification then we would really be pushing UK fire safety forward. Sir Ken Knight,… Read more »