4th September 2024

Two Care Home Directors Fined After Fire Safety Failings

What’s Happened?

Two directors of a care home business have recently been fined £125,000 after pleading guilty to a string of fire safety breaches across four different premises.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue officers were understood to have visited four care home properties run by the directors. Officers identified 12 separate fire safety issues across the sites where the directors had failed to discharge their duties to take general fire precautions to protect both the residents and staff.  

These breaches included:

• defective or missing fire alarm systems; 
• damage to fire doors and a lack of self-closures (the doors separated the only means of escape from fire-risk rooms such as bedrooms, kitchens and lounges); 
• fire risk assessments were not current and not suitable or sufficient, as they did not consider the identified failings
• a failure to provide adequate firefighting equipment

In Court 

Both directors appeared at Brighton Magistrates Court where they pleaded guilty to breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. 

District Judge Szagun, when considering the prosecution sentencing guidelines, upheld culpability to be high and the level of harm to be medium. In her judgement, the number of vulnerable residents placed at risk due to the defective fire doors and lack of detection and alarms raised the level of harm to a higher level. The judge added that the owners should have taken the time to understand published regulations and guidance when providing this type of service.

The defendants were fined £27,500 per offence for four of the offences, with guilty charges upheld for the remaining offences but no separate penalty awarded. This resulted in a £110,000 fine, a £2,000 victim surcharge and £12,455 costs.

If you have any queries regarding fire risk assessments then don’t hesitate to call our advice on 0300 303 5228 or email us at info@lighthouseriskservices.co.uk