Emergency telephone line is down - H&S implications?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

 

The BT telephone exchange near my School has a fault which means that our phones won't accept incoming or outbound calls. This also means that our 'emergency line' which dials the fire service if there is a fire on the premises is also down.

 

Does anyone know what the implications of this are in terms of safeguarding and health & safety?

 

We have one line which is on a seperate exchange so we still have the possibilty of calling the emergency services manually. We obviously have mobiles too.

 

Thanks.

[localzuk]

Having such a line isn't a statutory requirement (we don't have one, for example), therefore it going down has no direct implications according to the law that I can think of - you simply need to be able to call emergency services should you have an issue. Which means that so long as you have a mobile phone somewhere, its all good.

 

However, you should have a policy that outlines the procedure here, as that's the important bit - that everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency, should the automated system not be functioning.

[bandgeekmafia78]

Thanks a million localzuk - that is a perfect response! *thumbs up*

[jamin]

Worth noting it is a requirement that lift emergency phones to be working (and copper not VOIP) or shut down the lift.

[steveg]

Probably best to have it as part of the procedure that someone manually calls anyway? There is always a chance that an automated system wont work, even when the phone lines are up. Better that you call and they confirm they are on their way than you wait on the assumption that the system has already called them and ring ten minutes later when they haven't turned up.

 

We moved our automated fire system over to the same phone line as the building alarm recently to save money, assumed all was fine until a child triggered the fire alarm. Ten minutes later I got a call on my mobile (i'm on the call out list) from the alarm company to say that they had recieved notification of a triggered fire alarm, but couldn't call the fire brigade as they didn't have the number!

 

Steve

[MatthewL]

Just a note may fire services are changing attendances on AFA (automatic fire alarms) and may not attend between 9 and 5 unless it is called in. I know some areas are doing this but they said it would not affect certain places, schools been on of them.

 

This is mainly to reduce the number of false alarms they attend.

 

If you have any concerns I could contact your local Fire Service and ask advice from the Fire Safety Department.

[round2it]

give bt a ring and they can redirect all calls to a mobile phone dont think it costs the caller any extra (dont quote me on that)

 

they are usually pretty quick at doing this.

 

as for the lifts they usually have a dedicated line but test anyway if it does not work tape off the lifts and do not use they just in case