Fire Marshal and Fire Warden Duties

Fire Marshal vs Fire Warden: What’s the Difference?

There isn’t one. Fire marshal and fire warden are two names for the same job, and the government’s own guidance uses them interchangeably: it describes “staff expected to undertake the role of fire marshals (often called fire wardens)”. Some workplaces have a chief fire warden or a floor warden, but those are local titles, not separate legal roles.

The law doesn’t use either word. It talks about competent persons nominated by the employer to put the evacuation procedures into action. Whatever you call them, the duties, the training and the legal basis are the same.

If you are choosing or training people for the role, our fire marshal training covers both titles, because they are one job.

Is It a Legal Requirement to Have a Fire Marshal?

In almost every workplace, yes, although the law frames it as a duty on the employer rather than a job title.

England and Wales: The Fire Safety Order 2005

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 puts the duties on the responsible person. In a workplace that is the employer, so far as the workplace is under their control. In other premises it is whoever controls the premises for their business, or the owner (article 3).

Four articles create the fire marshal role:

1. Article 15 requires the responsible person to set up procedures for serious and imminent danger, including safety drills, and to “nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to implement those procedures in so far as they relate to the evacuation” of people from the premises (article 15).
2. Article 13 requires competent people to be nominated, where necessary, to carry out the firefighting measures, with enough of them and enough training and equipment for the size and hazards of the premises (article 13).
3. Article 18 requires one or more competent people to assist with the preventive and protective measures, with enough people, time and means for the size of the premises and the risks (article 18).
4. Article 21 requires adequate safety training for employees when they start and when their risks change, repeated periodically where appropriate and given during working hours (article 21).

“Competent” has the same meaning throughout: someone with sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to do the job properly. Article 19 also requires you to tell employees who the nominated people are.

One point catches employers out. Appointing fire marshals does not hand them your legal duty. Article 32(11) says an employer has no defence because of an act or default by a person nominated under articles 13 or 15. The responsible person stays responsible.

Fire safety sits alongside the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 rather than under it: article 47 of the Order disapplies the 1974 Act in relation to general fire precautions. In most workplaces the Order is enforced by your local fire and rescue authority, not the HSE.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland uses the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006. Northern Ireland uses the Fire and Rescue Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 and the Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010. In both, regulation 14 repeats the same duty to nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to carry out the evacuation procedures, so the fire marshal role works the same way.

What Are a Fire Warden’s Day-to-Day Duties?

Most of a fire warden’s work happens when nothing is on fire. The legal duty to keep escape routes clear, maintain equipment and carry out checks sits with the responsible person, and in most workplaces fire wardens do much of that work for them.

The Home Office guide for offices and shops includes an example maintenance checklist. Adapted for a fire warden’s area, the routine looks like this:

How often	What the fire warden checks
Daily	Fire exits open immediately and easily. Fire doors and escape routes are clear. The fire alarm panel shows normal. Exit signs and emergency lights are undamaged. Extinguishers are in place and visible
Weekly	A manual call point test sets off the alarm, and everyone heard it. Push bars and other emergency fastenings on fire exits work. External routes are clear and safe
Monthly	Self-closing fire doors close properly and their seals are in good condition. Emergency lights and exit signs work when tested. Stored-pressure extinguishers show the correct pressure

The weekly alarm test and the monthly emergency lighting test are often done by a facilities manager or a contractor. What matters is that someone named does each check, records it and reports faults.

Alongside the checks, fire wardens usually:

• spot and report fire hazards, such as rubbish piling up by a back door, overloaded sockets or heaters near paper and packaging;
• challenge fire doors being wedged open;
• remove security bolts or chains on final exit doors before the working day starts, where that is part of your procedure;
• check their area is safe at close of business, with rubbish removed and fire doors shut;
• report faults, incidents and near misses so the fire risk assessment can be updated.

HSE’s introduction to fire safety puts the principle simply: a fire needs a source of ignition, a source of fuel and oxygen. Most of a fire warden’s daily work is keeping the first two apart.

What Does a Fire Marshal Do When the Alarm Sounds?

This is the part of the job people picture. Government guidance lists the fire marshal’s role in a fire as:

• helping people on the premises to leave;
• checking the premises to make sure everyone has left;
• using firefighting equipment, if safe to do so;
• liaising with the fire and rescue service when it arrives;
• shutting down vital or dangerous equipment;
• taking a supervisory role in the fire situation.

In practice, that usually becomes a simple sequence for each fire marshal:

1. Raise the alarm if it isn’t already sounding, and make sure the fire and rescue service has been called, following your procedure for who calls 999.
2. Sweep your area. Walk through your zone, including toilets, meeting rooms and stores, telling everyone to leave by the nearest safe exit. Don’t let people stop for belongings, and don’t let anyone use the lifts unless they are evacuation lifts named in your plan.
3. Close doors behind you to slow the spread of fire and smoke, without locking them.
4. Help anyone who needs it, following their personal emergency evacuation plan if they have one.
5. Report to the assembly point. Tell whoever is in charge that your area is clear, or exactly who or which part you could not check.
6. Keep people out. Nobody goes back in until the fire and rescue service or the person in charge says it is safe. The Order requires your procedures to stop people resuming work while serious and imminent danger remains.

The roll call matters. If anyone is unaccounted for, that information goes to the fire and rescue service when it arrives, so make sure your fire marshals know who to give it to.

Helping People Who Need Assistance: PEEPs

A personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) is a written plan for someone who may need help or extra time to get out, such as a wheelchair user, someone with a visual or hearing impairment, or someone with a condition that affects their mobility.

The Home Office guidance on means of escape for disabled people is clear on a few points:

• the evacuation plan must cover everyone likely to be in the building, and should not rely on the fire and rescue service to make it work;
• PEEPs for staff and regular visitors should be tailored to the person and agreed with them, and all staff should be given the chance to have one at induction;
• you shouldn’t assume a disabled person needs a PEEP, and people without an obvious disability may ask for one;
• for occasional visitors, use a set of standard plans offered at reception;
• escape plans should generally be practised at least every six months.

The fire marshal’s part is practical. They need to know who in their area has a PEEP, who their named helpers are, and what equipment or route the plan relies on. If a helper is off sick or on holiday, someone must cover, and the fire marshal is often the person who notices the gap.

Fire Drills: The Fire Marshal’s Role

GOV.UK says you should carry out at least one fire drill a year and record the results as part of your fire safety and evacuation plan. The Home Office guide adds that your fire risk assessment may call for more, and that high staff turnover is a reason to drill more often.

Fire marshals run the drill in their area exactly as they would a real alarm. The guide suggests a few ways to make a drill worth doing:

• tell staff a drill is coming and that taking part is compulsory (surprise drills can introduce risks that outweigh the benefit);
• warn your alarm receiving centre, if your system is monitored, so the fire and rescue service isn’t called;
• block one exit or stairway with an observer, so people learn to use a route they don’t normally take;
• ask someone at random to set off the alarm at the nearest call point, which tests whether people know where it is;
• nominate observers to watch for problems.

Afterwards, hold a quick debrief. The guide lists what to look for: trouble with the roll call, people using their usual route instead of the nearest exit, final exit doors that are hard to open, difficulties for disabled people, people stopping to collect belongings or heading for the lifts, and doors and windows left open. Record what you find and fix it.

Should a Fire Marshal Use a Fire Extinguisher?

Only if they have been trained and it is safe. The government’s guide for offices and shops says people with no training should not be expected to attempt to put out a fire, although all staff should know where the equipment is and how it basically works. Where your fire strategy expects fire marshals to take a more active role, they need more comprehensive training.

The fire marshal’s priority is always the evacuation. A small fire, such as a waste bin, might be put out quickly with the right extinguisher. Anything larger, or anything that puts the fire marshal’s own way out at risk, means leaving and closing the door.

Fires are grouped by what is burning, and the extinguisher must match. Modern extinguishers have a red body with a coloured band showing the type:

Extinguisher	Band colour	Use on	Limits
Water	Red	Class A: wood, paper, textiles and other solids	Not for live electrical equipment, flammable liquids or cooking oil
Foam	Cream	Class A and Class B (flammable liquids such as petrol or diesel)	Not for deep-fat fryers or chip pans
Powder	Blue	Most classes of fire, including electrical equipment	Not generally suitable for enclosed spaces: it cuts visibility, can affect breathing, and the fire can reignite
Carbon dioxide (CO2)	Black	Fires involving electrical equipment	Disconnect the power first where you can
Class F	Check the label	Cooking oil fires, such as deep-fat fryers	Mainly for commercial kitchens

The guide also warns that it is not safe to fight fires involving aerosols with extinguishers. Give extinguishers a brief check, normally monthly, and have them maintained by a competent person every year.

How Many Fire Marshals Do You Need?

The law does not set a ratio. You will see rules of thumb quoted online, but none of them comes from the legislation or the government’s guidance.

What the law does say is that you need a sufficient number of competent people (article 15), and that the number, the time they have and the means at their disposal must be adequate “having regard to the size of the premises, the risks to which relevant persons are exposed and the distribution of those risks throughout the premises” (article 18).

So the number comes out of your fire risk assessment. Questions that drive it:

• How many floors, zones and separate buildings does each sweep need to cover?
• How many people are on site at the busiest time, and how many are visitors or members of the public who don’t know the building?
• Which shifts, weekends and out-of-hours work need cover?
• Who covers when a fire marshal is on holiday, off sick or working from home? The guidance lists cover arrangements for nominated people as something your instructions should address.
• Does anyone have a PEEP that relies on named helpers?
• How high are the risks: a quiet office, or a kitchen, workshop or store of flammable materials?

If you can’t sweep every area quickly with the people on site on your thinnest shift, you don’t have enough. Our guide to fire risk assessment explains how the assessment itself works.

What Training Does a Fire Marshal Need?

Everyone needs basic fire safety training under article 21: what to do on discovering a fire, how to raise the alarm, the escape routes and assembly point, why fire doors stay shut and why you don’t use the lifts. Fire marshals need more. The Home Office guide says training for the role may include:

• detailed knowledge of the fire safety strategy for the premises;
• awareness of how people behave in fires;
• how to encourage others to use the most appropriate escape route;
• how to search safely and recognise areas that are unsafe to enter;
• the difficulties some people, particularly disabled people, may have in escaping, and any special evacuation arrangements;
• additional training in using firefighting equipment;
• the purpose of any fixed systems, such as sprinklers;
• reporting faults, incidents and near misses.

Training must take place during working hours, be easy to understand, take account of the findings of the fire risk assessment and be tested by fire drills. The guide also says it should be verifiable, because enforcing authorities may want to see training records.

An online course is a practical way to cover the knowledge. Add a walk-round of your own building, so each fire marshal has physically walked their escape routes, found every call point and extinguisher and stood at the assembly point. Then involve them in every drill.

The law sets no fixed refresher interval. Training must be repeated periodically where appropriate, so refresh it when the building, the layout, the evacuation plan or the person’s role changes, and set a regular interval in your fire safety arrangements.

Who Should Be a Fire Marshal?

Choose people who are usually on site, not someone who travels three days a week. Look for people who stay calm, are confident telling others what to do (including senior managers) and know the building well. Team leaders, receptionists and facilities staff are common choices, but the right answer depends on where people actually sit and when they work.

The Order prefers your own people: under article 18, a competent person in your employment must be appointed in preference to someone from outside. Tell everyone who the fire marshals are (article 19 requires it), and update the list when people leave.

What to Do Next

If you are not sure your fire marshal arrangements would hold up on a bad day, do this week:

1. List your fire marshals by floor and shift, and mark the gaps: holidays, part-time days, the late shift.
2. Check your fire risk assessment says how many you need and why. If it doesn’t, review it using the five steps to risk assessment approach and the fire-specific steps in our fire risk assessment guide.
3. Make sure everyone with a PEEP has named helpers who know the plan.
4. Put the next fire drill in the diary and decide which exit you will block.
5. Use the fire warden checklist below for the daily and weekly checks, and keep the records.

When your fire marshals need training, our online fire marshal and fire warden course covers their duties from daily checks to the roll call, with a certificate on completion and team licences if you are training a whole rota.