Your Fire Marshal Is Not a Tick-Box. They Are a Person With a Plan.

29th July 2026

Written by Stephanie Austin — Owner & Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | Last reviewed: July 2026 | Next review: July 2027

---

I have walked into a lot of workplaces over the years. Different sectors, different sizes, different levels of H&S maturity. But certain things turn up again and again, and they never stop being alarming. Staff who could not tell me what they would do if the fire alarm sounded. Fire drills run so badly that nobody takes them seriously. Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans, or PEEPs, either missing entirely or so generic that they would have been useless to the individual they were written for. Doors propped open that should have been closed. Evacuation chairs are collecting dust in a corner, the wrong type for the building. And one site where the fire alarm system had stopped working, and nobody had escalated it. Not for weeks.

None of these was in businesses that did not care. That is the part worth pausing on. Most had policies. Some had certificates. But there is a significant gap between having documentation and having a genuinely prepared workforce, and fire safety is where that gap tends to open widest.

Fire safety and fire marshal training protect people. Full stop. But they also protect your business, your legal standing, and your ability to look a fire inspector in the eye. This post covers what the law actually requires, what good training looks like, and why a piece of paper in a drawer is not the same as a competent fire marshal on the floor.

Key facts: workplace fire safety in England, 2024/25. 6,665 fires in non-residential buildings attended by fire and rescue services. 12 fatalities in non-residential building fires. Electrical faults were the single largest identifiable cause, responsible for approximately18% of workplace fires (2,126 incidents). Industrial, food and drink, and retail premises accounted for over 60% of all workplace fires. 25% of businesses affected by a serious fire never reopen. The average major fire costs a UK business £657,074. Total economic and social cost of fire in England: £12 billion per year. Sources: MHCLG Detailed Analysis of Fires, England, April 2024 to March 2025; gov.uk fire statistics

What Does the Law Actually Require?

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the Fire Safety Order, or FSO) is the primary piece of fire safety legislation in England and Wales. It applies to all non-domestic premises. If people work there, visit there, or stay there, the FSO applies.

Since the FSO came into force, it has been strengthened by two significant pieces of legislation that every responsible person now needs to know about:

• The Fire Safety Act 2021, which clarified that the structure, external walls, and flat entrance doors of buildings fall within the scope of the FSO and must be included in fire risk assessments.
• Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, which came into force on 1 October 2023, now requires all responsible persons to record all findings from their fire risk assessment, regardless of premises size. Previously, only businesses with five or more employees were required to record significant findings. That threshold no longer exists.

Under the FSO, the responsible person, typically the employer or the person in control of the premises, must:

• Carry out and regularly review a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment
• Record all findings from that assessment (as of October 2023, this applies to every premises)
• Record the identity of anyone appointed to carry out or review the fire risk assessment
• Implement and maintain appropriate fire precautions to keep employees and others as safe as is reasonably practicable
• Appoint one or more competent persons to assist with fire safety arrangements
• Provide employees with adequate fire safety information, instruction, and training
• Ensure that training is repeated periodically and adapted to any change in risk

What does ‘competent person’ mean? The FSO does not use the term ‘fire marshal’ or ‘fire warden’. The legal term is ‘competent person’. Article 18 of the FSO requires the responsible person to appoint one or more competent persons to assist with preventive and protective measures. Competence means having the necessary training, knowledge, and experience to carry out the required duties. Appointing someone to the role without giving them proper training does not meet this standard. The title is optional. The competence is not.

How Many Fire Marshals Does My Business Need?

There is no fixed number written into law. The answer comes from your fire risk assessment, which should reflect your premises, your occupancy levels, your shift patterns, your building layout, and your risk profile. What the law requires is sufficient coverage. There must always be enough trained fire marshals present when the building is occupied.

As a practical starting point, the Health and Safety Executive provides general guidance on ratios. The table below gives a working framework, but your fire risk assessment takes precedence:

Risk level	Suggested ratio	Typical premises
Low risk	1 per 50 employees	Modern single-floor office, small shop
Medium risk	1 per 20 employees	Multi-floor office, hotel, retail unit, school
High risk	1 per 15 employees	Industrial unit, warehouse, kitchen, laboratory, site with vulnerable occupants
Minimum (any premises)	At least 2	To ensure cover during absence, holiday, or illness

Always appoint more than you think you need. Sickness, holidays, and shift changes can leave a building without a trained marshal if you have only appointed the bare minimum.

What Does Fire Marshal Training Actually Cover?

A fire marshal course is not a lecture on fire extinguisher colours. A good course builds genuine competence across every part of the role, from prevention through to evacuation.

Specifically, training should cover:

• Fire science and the fire triangle: understanding how fire behaves, what it needs to start and spread, and how removing one element stops it
• Fire hazard identification: recognising risks specific to the workplace, including electrical faults, flammable materials, hot work, and housekeeping failures
• Fire risk assessment basics: understanding what a fire risk assessment is, how it informs the marshal’s role, and when it needs reviewing
• The alarm and evacuation procedure: knowing what to do from the moment an alarm sounds, including sweep and search, assembly point management, and headcount
• Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs): understanding the legal requirement to plan for individuals who cannot self-evacuate, and why a generic template does not satisfy this
• Fire extinguisher selection and use: identifying which extinguisher is correct for which class of fire, and how to use one safely (and when not to try)
• Communication with the fire and rescue service: what information to provide, who gives it, and how to support the response on arrival
• Fire door and escape route checks: the marshal’s ongoing responsibility to ensure routes are clear, doors are functional, and equipment is present and serviceable
• Post-incident procedures: what happens after an evacuation, including documentation, incident reporting, and reviewing the plan

What I Actually Find When I Walk Through the Door

I want to be specific here, because vague warnings about fire safety do nobody any good. Over many years of delivering fire marshal training across a wide range of workplaces in Greater Manchester and beyond, I have encountered the same problems repeatedly. They are not rare. They are common enough that any training manager reading this should use them as a checklist for their own premises.

Common failures found during fire safety training delivery.

• Staff who did not know their evacuation procedure. Not because they had not been told, but because it had been covered once in an induction two years ago and never reinforced.
• Fire drills run so badly that they are counterproductive.
• Alarms not being taken seriously, staff wandering back inside before the all-clear, and nobody conducting a headcount. If the drill does not reflect what would actually happen, it teaches the wrong lesson.
• PEEPs that were copy-and-paste documents. The individual’s name had been dropped in, but the plan bore no relation to their actual mobility, their usual location in the building, or what equipment was available to assist them.
• Blocked escape routes and propped fire doors. Cardboard boxes, cleaning equipment, and a filing cabinet that had always been there. The fire door was held open with a wedge because it was ‘easier’ for deliveries.
• Wrong evacuation equipment. An evacuation chair in a building with a single straight staircase, when what was needed was an evacuation sledge. Or equipment that had never been tested, and nobody knew how to use.
• A fire alarm system that had stopped functioning, and nobody had escalated it. Not a minor fault. Not something being looked at. Simply not working, with no record of a report being made. That is a legal breach and a life-safety failure simultaneously.

This is precisely why I wrote about the fire escape key in my earlier post, Every Box Ticked, Except the One That Actually Mattered. Equipment and procedures need to be fit for purpose and regularly checked. A certificate from three years ago does not tell you whether your fire marshal would know what to do tomorrow morning. A fire risk assessment that has never been reviewed does not reflect the building you are in today.

The Legal Framework at a Glance

This table brings together the key legislation every responsible person in England and Wales needs to know:

Legislation	In force	Key workplace requirement
Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005	October 2006	Fire risk assessment, competent persons appointed, training provided, general fire precautions maintained
Health & Safety at Work Act 1974	1974 (ongoing)	Duty to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare of all employees
Fire Safety Act 2021	May 2022	Clarified scope of FSO to include building structure, external walls, and flat entrance doors
Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022	January 2023	Additional duties for responsible persons in multi-occupied residential buildings, including fire door checks and resident information requirements
Building Safety Act 2022, Section 156	October 2023	All responsible persons must now record ALL fire risk assessment findings, regardless of premises size or number of employees

Non-compliance with the FSO can result in an unlimited fine and/or up to two years’ imprisonment. Fire and rescue services have powers to issue enforcement notices, prohibition notices, and to prosecute.

How Often Does Fire Marshal Training Need to Be Refreshed?

Fire marshal certificates are generally valid for three years, and most training providers, including Prima Cura, issue certification on that basis. But three years is the outer limit, not the default. Your fire risk assessment should dictate the actual frequency for your premises.

You should also revisit training whenever any of the following occur:

• The building layout changes significantly
• A new process or material introduces a different fire risk
• There has been an actual fire, a near miss, or a fire drill that identified serious gaps
• A fire marshal leaves the business or changes roles
• The composition of the workforce changes in ways that affect evacuation planning (for example, an increase in employees with mobility requirements)
• Your fire risk assessment is reviewed and updated

Annual refresher versus full course A brief annual refresher, which can be as short as a half day, keeps knowledge current and gives marshals the chance to raise anything they have noticed on the ground. A full one-day recertification every three years satisfies the certificate requirement. Combining both approaches is best practice in any medium-to-high risk environment.

PEEPs: The Part Most Businesses Are Getting Wrong

Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans are a legal requirement under the FSO for any individual who may not be able to self-evacuate in an emergency. That includes people with physical disabilities, but it also includes temporary conditions: a broken leg, a late-stage pregnancy, or a worker returning from surgery.

The failure I see most often is not an absence of PEEPs. It is PEEPs that exist on paper but would not function in practice. A plan that says ‘assist to the refuge area and await the fire service’ is not a plan if nobody in the building knows who is responsible for that assist, where the refuge area is, or whether the evacuation equipment needed is actually present and the right type.

A PEEP must be:

• Individual: written for and with the specific person, not copied from a template with a name inserted
• Specific: it must name who will assist, by role or by name, and what equipment will be used
• Practical: it must reflect the actual building, the actual shift pattern, and the actual availability of equipment
• Reviewed: any change in the individual’s condition, location, or the building’s layout requires the PEEP to be updated
• Known: the individual themselves and all named assistants must have read, understood, and agreed to the plan

If your fire marshals have not been trained on PEEP creation and implementation, they cannot carry out this part of their role. It is that direct.

What a Good Fire Drill Actually Looks Like

Most businesses conduct fire drills. Far fewer conduct fire drills that are genuinely useful. A drill that follows the same route, at the same time of year, with everyone expecting it, and with nobody timing the evacuation or checking the headcount, is not a drill. It is a formality.

A well-run fire drill should:

• Be conducted at least annually (more frequently in higher-risk environments)
• Include a realistic element of the unexpected: a primary route blocked, the marshal absent, an occupant in a refuge area requiring coordination
• Involve a timed full evacuation with a proper headcount at the assembly point
• Test that fire doors close properly and escape routes are unobstructed
• Include a debrief to capture what went well and what needs addressing
• Be formally recorded, including the date, time, number of occupants, duration, and any actions identified

The record matters. A fire and rescue service inspector will ask to see it. Your insurer may ask to see it. And if something goes wrong, it is part of the evidence trail.

Fire Safety Awareness for All Staff vs Fire Marshal Training: What’s the Difference?

Under the FSO, every member of staff must receive fire safety information and training. This is not optional and it is not limited to nominated fire marshals. All employees need to know how to raise the alarm, where the assembly point is, what not to do (do not use lifts, do not collect belongings, do not prop fire doors open), and who the fire marshals are.

Fire marshal training goes considerably further. It trains a nominated individual to take active responsibility for sweep and search, headcount, communication with emergency services, PEEP implementation, and ongoing fire safety checks between incidents.

	Fire safety awareness (all staff)	Fire marshal training (nominated roles)
Required for	Every employee, contractor, regular visitor	Nominated fire marshals/wardens only
Content	Alarm response, evacuation routes, assembly point, what not to do	All of the above, plus PEEP, extinguisher use, sweep and search, drill management, ongoing checks
Certification	Not typically certificated separately	Certificate issued, typically valid 3 years
Legal basis	FSO Article 21: information and instructions to employees	FSO Article 18: appointment of competent persons
How delivered	Induction, e-learning, annual refresher sessions	Half-day or full-day course with assessment

Fire Marshal Training with Prima Cura

Prima Cura Training delivers fire marshal training across Greater Manchester and throughout England. Every course is delivered by an experienced trainer with a real-world health, safety, and social care background, not a generalist. Training is built around your workplace: your layout, your shift patterns, your specific risks.

We cover the full scope of the role, including PEEP creation and implementation, evacuation equipment selection, fire drill management, and the legal framework every responsible person needs to understand in 2026.

• Fire Marshal Training — half-day and full-day options available for groups
• Health and Safety Training — broader workplace H&S programmes

If you want to talk through what your business needs before you book, get in touch. Call us on 0333 999 8783 or email info@primacuratraining.co.uk.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

---

---

This article provides general information about fire safety law and fire marshal training in England and Wales as of July 2026. It does not constitute legal or professional advice and should not be relied upon as such. Legislation and guidance are subject to change. Responsible persons should seek qualified legal or fire safety advice specific to their premises. All statistics are sourced from official government publications, including MHCLG and gov.uk fire statistics datasets.