Fire Safety Awareness

Fire safety awareness training delivered at your workplace, live online, or via eLearning. Half a day. The fire safety knowledge every member of your team needs: how fires start, how to respond, and what their role is when something goes wrong.

Course Overview

Most staff in most workplaces have sat through a fire safety induction at some point. They’ve been told where the fire exits are, shown a slide about the fire triangle, and signed a form. And then, in a care home in the North West, a training session revealed that nobody on the team knew where their alarm control panel was. Nobody could describe the evacuation process. There were no grab bags. And nobody had considered that a night shift running on minimum staffing levels faces an entirely different evacuation challenge than a full daytime team.

This isn’t an unusual finding. It’s what happens when fire safety training is treated as a compliance exercise rather than a genuine preparation for an emergency.

Fire Safety Awareness Training gives all staff the knowledge to understand fire risks, reduce hazards, respond correctly when something goes wrong, and understand their role within the organisation’s emergency procedures. It isn’t fire marshal training. It doesn’t train staff to lead evacuations or take tactical responsibility for fire safety. What it does is ensure that every member of the team understands the basics, knows what to do, and isn’t a liability in the critical first minutes of a fire emergency. Where organisations want us to, we can also conduct a walkthrough of your premises and provide a written report identifying recommendations. The course reflects the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the Fire Safety Act 2021, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022.

Course Details

  • Duration: Half day (3 hours)
  • Delivery: Face-to-face in-house, live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, or eLearning
  • Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Fire Safety Awareness
  • Awarding organisations: CPD-Accredited
  • Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher is recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner following workplace changes, a fire incident, or significant staff turnover.
  • Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for all staff in any workplace setting.

  • All employees requiring fire safety awareness as part of induction or ongoing compliance
  • New starters across any sector
  • Office, retail, hospitality, warehouse, and care setting staff
  • Supervisors and team leaders who are not designated fire marshals but have day-to-day responsibility for their team’s safety
  • Organisations wanting to build or reinforce a proactive fire prevention culture across the whole workforce

For staff appointed as fire marshals or fire wardens with specific evacuation leadership responsibilities, see our Fire Marshal Training course, which covers the designated marshal role in full. Not sure which your team needs? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

The Legal Requirement

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, employers and responsible persons have a legal duty to ensure that employees receive adequate fire safety training. The Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 have strengthened and extended those obligations, particularly around fire doors, multi-occupied buildings, and the provision of fire safety information to occupants.

Adequate fire safety training under the Order is not a one-off induction slide. It means staff understand how fires start and spread, know the emergency procedures for their specific workplace, can identify hazards and act on them, and know exactly what to do the moment something goes wrong. An employee who freezes, makes the wrong decision, or simply does not know where the call point is in the first sixty seconds of a fire can cost lives, including their own.

In care settings, the stakes are particularly high. Many individuals in residential and nursing care cannot self-evacuate. Night shifts operate with reduced staffing. Grab bags containing resident information, medication records, and evacuation documentation may need to be taken out of the building quickly. For organisations regulated by the Care Quality Commission, fire safety falls directly within CQC Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment. CQC inspectors look at fire safety arrangements, staff training records, and whether evacuation procedures reflect the actual staffing levels and resident needs in the building.

What the Day Covers

All content reflects the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, and current HSE and National Fire Chiefs Council guidance throughout. Topics covered include:

  • The legal framework: employer and employee duties under current fire safety legislation
  • The fire triangle: how fires start and spread, and how removing any one element prevents or suppresses fire
  • Common workplace fire hazards: ignition sources, fuel loads, and the habits that increase risk
  • Fire risk assessments: what they are, why they must be current, and what happens when they are not
  • Alarm systems and call points: locating and understanding your building’s specific system
  • Emergency evacuation procedures: assembly points, roll call, and communication with emergency services
  • Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans: what they are, who needs one, and what your role is
  • Evacuation planning for high-risk scenarios: night shifts, reduced staffing, and individuals with complex needs
  • Grab bags and critical documentation: what to take out and why
  • Fire signage, fire doors, and escape routes: their function and why they must be kept clear and maintained
  • Introduction to fire extinguisher types and uses: which fire class each is appropriate for
  • Fire prevention through housekeeping and safe working practices

Every course is also built to include your organisation’s evacuation procedures, assembly point arrangements, and PEEP requirements as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace, live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, or via eLearning for organisations requiring flexible, self-paced completion. For in-person delivery, content is prepared around your building, your evacuation procedures, and the specific risks relevant to your sector. Learners leave knowing their own building, not a fictional one.

Groups are capped at 12 to ensure every learner gets sufficient time for discussion. Every session is built around your working environment, your internal procedures, and the specific fire risks relevant to your sector and premises. If your building has changed, your procedures have been updated, or you’ve had a fire incident or near miss recently, we can discuss how to build that context into the session during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

  • Interactive, discussion-based content built around your specific workplace rather than a generic setting
  • Coverage of your evacuation procedures, assembly point arrangements, and PEEP requirements
  • Scenario work covering the real decisions staff face when discovering a fire or responding to an alarm

The Premises Walkthrough and Written Report

For organisations that want to go beyond the training session, we offer a premises walkthrough during or following delivery. During the walkthrough, our trainer reviews your evacuation routes, fire exits, call point locations, assembly points, fire door compliance, and any visible hazards or procedural gaps.

For care settings, this includes reviewing PEEP arrangements, grab bag provision, and the practicalities of your evacuation plan against your actual staffing levels, including night shifts. Following the walkthrough, we produce a written report for the manager, setting out our observations and recommendations. This gives the organisation a clear, actionable plan to implement the improvements identified.

This is not a formal fire risk assessment, which must be carried out by a competent fire risk assessor. It is a practical, experience-based review that helps organisations understand what their training has revealed and what needs to change. For the care home in Greater Manchester that prompted this offering, it gave the management team the starting point they needed to bring their fire safety arrangements up to the standard the law and their residents’ safety require. If you’d like to include a walkthrough and written report alongside your training, discuss this with us when you enquire.

Fire Safety Awareness or Fire Marshal Training?

Both courses contribute to meeting your legal duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. They serve different roles, and most organisations need both.

Fire Safety Awareness (this course) is for all staff. It covers what every employee needs to know about fire safety, hazard recognition, and emergency procedures. It ensures the whole workforce is not a liability when something goes wrong.

Fire Marshal Training is for designated fire marshals and wardens who have specific responsibilities for leading evacuations, sweeping areas, coordinating with emergency services, and maintaining fire safety arrangements on an ongoing basis. It is a more detailed, role-specific course.

We don’t make that determination for employers; the responsibility sits with you. But we do provide guidance throughout the enquiry process and can combine both courses into a single delivery day, where that suits your organisation.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Fire Safety Awareness.

A refresher is recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner if the workplace layout changes, fire procedures are updated, following any fire incident or near miss, or following significant staff turnover. In care settings, the refresher cycle should also be reviewed whenever there are significant changes to the resident or service user profile that affect evacuation needs.

Our Fire Marshal Training course is the natural next step for staff who take on designated fire marshal responsibilities.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

What is the difference between this course and Fire Marshal Training?

Fire Safety Awareness is for all staff. It covers what every employee needs to know about fire safety, hazard recognition, and emergency procedures, and ensures the whole workforce can respond correctly when something goes wrong. Fire Marshal Training is for designated fire marshals and wardens with specific responsibilities for leading evacuations, sweeping areas, and coordinating with emergency services. Both courses are legally relevant but serve different roles. Most organisations need both.

What is a grab bag, and does my organisation need one?

A grab bag is a prepared container, typically kept near the main exit or nurses’ station in a care setting, that contains critical documentation needed in an evacuation: resident personal information, medication records, key contacts, and any other information that emergency services or receiving facilities will need. In a real fire emergency, there is no time to gather this information. For care homes and residential settings across Greater Manchester and nationally, grab bags are a practical necessity and form part of a well-structured evacuation plan. This course covers what they should contain and why they matter.

What should a night shift evacuation plan include for a care setting?

Night evacuation plans must reflect the actual staffing levels and resident dependency needs present during the night. A care home running on two or three staff cannot evacuate using the same procedure as a fully staffed daytime shift. The plan must be specific: which staff member is responsible for which areas, what the evacuation order is, which residents have PEEPs, where the evacuation equipment is, and at what point emergency services are called and additional support is requested. This course covers night shift evacuation planning specifically for care settings.

Is fire safety awareness training a legal requirement?

Yes. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires employers to provide adequate fire safety training to employees. What constitutes adequate training depends on the nature of the workplace and the roles of the staff involved. At a minimum, all employees should understand the emergency procedures for their workplace, know how to raise the alarm, and know what to do when it sounds. This course meets that baseline across all sectors.

Related Courses

Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Health and Safety Executive, the Care Quality Commission, and current UK fire safety legislation, including the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects current UK fire safety legislation and best practice as of the date of review. It does not constitute legal advice. Fire Safety Awareness Training supports compliance with employer duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 but does not replace the legal requirement for a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment to be carried out by a competent person. The premises walkthrough and written report offered alongside this training is an observational review and does not constitute a formal fire risk assessment. Organisations remain responsible for ensuring their fire risk assessments, Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans, evacuation procedures, and staff training meet all applicable legal obligations.

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