Mast Safety is pleased to be supporting Bermondsey Bierkeller with a full package of Health & Safety services, from a Health & Safety audit and Fire Risk Assessment through to Legionella testing, PAT testing, fire safety training and First Aid training for more than forty members of staff. It is a good example of something the hospitality sector often underestimates: how many separate legal duties a single venue has to hold together at once.
A busy bar, restaurant or entertainment venue is one of the more demanding environments to keep compliant. It combines public occupancy with a working kitchen, a cellar, water systems, a large amount of portable electrical equipment, late hours, alcohol and a workforce that changes constantly. Each of those areas sits under its own piece of legislation, and each carries its own duty on the employer or the person in control of the premises. Handled well, they form a single compliance picture. Handled piecemeal, they are where venues get caught out.
Why hospitality is a distinct Health & Safety challenge
Most Health & Safety guidance is written with construction, manufacturing or the office in mind. Hospitality sits awkwardly between them. You have members of the public on the premises in large numbers, often after they have been drinking, sometimes in low light and at volume during live events. You have staff working split shifts, late finishes and lone closes. You have a high proportion of young and casual workers who may be new to the job and to their responsibilities. And you have a physical environment, hot kitchens, wet floors, glassware, cellar drops and heavy deliveries, that produces a steady stream of everyday hazards.
The result is that a venue rarely has a single large risk to manage. It has a dozen smaller ones running at the same time, with a legal duty attached to most of them.
Fire safety starts with your Fire Risk Assessment
Every venue where people work must have a current Fire Risk Assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and a named responsible person who acts on it. For a venue that fills with members of the public, this is not a paperwork exercise. Occupancy numbers, clear escape routes, signage, emergency lighting and how quickly a busy room can be evacuated all sit inside it, and they matter far more when the room is full and the lights are down for a performance.
A Fire Risk Assessment for licensed premises is a specialist piece of work, and it is the foundation the rest of your fire safety arrangements are built on. It is worth being clear that this is a different thing from the structural fire protection work, such as compartmentation and fire stopping, that applies to larger and multi-occupied buildings. For most venues, the Fire Risk Assessment and the fire safety training that follows from it are the priority.
Legionella and water safety
Any premises with a water system has a legal duty to assess and control the risk of Legionella bacteria, following the Health and Safety Executive’s Approved Code of Practice L8 and the guidance in HSG274. Hospitality venues are more exposed than most people assume. Cellar cooling systems, long pipe runs, taps and outlets that are used only occasionally, and any period where part of the premises is closed or quiet can all allow water to sit at the temperatures Legionella thrives in.
The duty is to have a suitable risk assessment, appropriate controls, and a competent person overseeing them. Testing frequency follows from the assessment rather than a fixed calendar, which is exactly why the assessment has to be done properly in the first place.
Electrical safety and PAT testing
Under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, you have to keep electrical equipment in a safe condition. In a venue, the sheer volume of portable equipment is the challenge. Kitchen appliances, bar equipment, cellar gear and, in a live entertainment venue, stage lighting, sound and AV all count, and much of it is heavily used, moved around and exposed to heat, water and spillage.
There is no single legal interval for portable appliance testing. The right frequency is risk based and depends on the type of equipment and how hard it is used, which in a busy venue can mean far more frequent checks on some items than on others. A sensible testing regime, informed by that risk, keeps you both safe and compliant.
First aid, trained staff and competence
The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require you to provide adequate first aid cover, based on a needs assessment rather than a headcount alone. For a venue, that assessment has to account for a large and variable number of people on site, public as well as staff, across late and split shifts. Cover that looks fine on a quiet Tuesday can fall short on a busy event night, which is why training a good number of staff, as this venue has done for more than forty of its people, is the practical answer.
First aid sits alongside a wider duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to give staff the information, instruction and training they need to work safely. Fire marshals, first aiders, manual handling for deliveries and cellar work, and induction for new and casual staff all fall under this. In a sector with high turnover, keeping that training current is an ongoing job rather than a one-off.
Seeing the whole picture with a Health & Safety audit
The single most useful thing a venue can do is step back and look at all of this together. A Health & Safety audit maps every duty that applies to the premises, shows where you are meeting it and where you are not, and turns a scattered set of obligations into one clear plan.
It also catches the duties that are easy to miss, including newer ones. Venues that hold live entertainment and larger public gatherings are, for example, coming into scope of newer requirements such as Martyn’s Law for qualifying premises, which sits on top of the general Health & Safety regime rather than replacing it. An audit is how you find out what actually applies to your venue before an inspector, an insurer or an incident does it for you.
This is the real advantage of handling compliance as one programme rather than a series of disconnected jobs. One assessment of the whole premises, one plan, and one point of contact when something changes, whether that is a refit, a new event licence or a change in the law. It is how we work with clients in high-footfall, public-facing environments, from a Bermondsey events venue to a busy retail concourse at Heathrow, and how we support venues that want compliance managed rather than merely ticked off.
