How to Start & Run a B&B BandBED2eBook-1 | Page 44

Second Edition, we are able to give a very comprehensive overview of the 2006
regulations and their effect.
This saga had echoes for David from the past – his grandparents had started and run a
60 bedroom hotel on Brighton seafront for many years, and as a boy David occasionally
helped out. He remembers the consternation when the 1971 Fire Precautions Act came
in, and the huge cost, uncertainty and disruption as hotels grappled with the Act’s then
onerous-seeming requirements. Much the same reaction was felt by small B&Bs in
2006 onwards as the RRFSO brought them into the enforcement regime alongside hotels
for the first time.
In a nutshell, the situation under the 1971 Act imposed the requirement for a “Fire
Certificate” on buildings falling into clear (if perhaps arbitrary) criteria. As far as B&Bs
are concerned, the relevant part was that if you had no more than six letting rooms and
no letting rooms above the first floor or below the ground floor, you did not need a Fire
Certificate. It was as simple as that. (Although in recent years, even private dwellings
if building works are carried out the building has a second floor, have under building
regulations to provide a “protected means of escape”, which may require fire doors to
be installed.)
This had been the situation for many years, and so a huge number of B&Bs, probably
the majority, had not had to worry about meeting the strict requirements of a Fire
Certificate. Those that have (like ourselves with our own B&B) have been forced to
quickly become experts, to grapple with the often conflicting requirements of the fire
and planning departments (if your building is ‘listed’ too, like ours, a further dimension
is added to the nightmare), and above all to realise how expensive it can be to adapt
your property.
The RRFSO was supposedly intended by Government to be a deregulatory measure,
lightening the burden on the industry, but most B&B owners (who had of course not
been consulted) did not see it that way. In essence, it removes the old clear distinction
between buildings requiring a Fire Certificate and buildings which to not need one; in
fact, it abolishes the concept of “Fire Certificates”. The new regulations impose a
responsibility on every individual property owner (including every B&B owner
regardless of how many rooms they have or on which floors) to carry out a Fire Risk
Assessment, and then to put “reasonable and practicable” fire precautions in place
“where necessary”.
The new regime is explicitly intended to be no more nor less onerous that the one it
replaced. In the words of the Government Department responsible (then the ODPM,
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister