“The law requires all businesses and organizations who have five or more employees or, have premises visited by the public or, are a landlord with control over business premises or, are a landlord of HMO properties or, are self-employed with business premises to have suitable and sufficient fire safety provisions in those premises that fall under their control”.

The governing legislation for England and Wales is The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1541/contents/made  for Scotland The Fire Safety Regulations 2006 (Scotland),  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2006/456/contents/made and for Northern Ireland The Fire Safety Regulations 2010 (Northern Ireland) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisr/2010/325/contents/made 

Whilst there are variations within these documents, the key themes are the same;

1. You must have robust management processes to deal with prevention, covering subjects such as; emergency planning, coordination & communication, training, in-house safety inspections, record keeping and constant review.
2. You must have the appropriate fire safety protection features in place such as; adequately designed escape routes, signage, emergency lighting, means of raising the alarm and access for fire service personnel.
3. And, you must have all safety systems routinely maintained to the correct technical standard by appropriately qualified technicians.

The Fire Risk Assessment process is the method by which the legislation expects you, the business, to demonstrate that all of the above requirements are satisfied to the appropriate level.