Fire risk
assessment
in Northwich.

We are based in Chester, roughly eighteen miles from Northwich, and cover the town and its surrounding mid-Cheshire catchment regularly. Northwich sits comfortably within our core Cheshire West practice, and for most premises we can book within one to two weeks.

Northwich's industrial fire safety profile is shaped by a chemical and manufacturing heritage that stretches back to the 19th century. INEOS operates a major facility at Winnington, solution-mining approximately 2.5 million tonnes of salt annually and supplying brine to adjacent plants for the manufacture of chlorine and caustic soda. Tata Chemicals Europe, successor to the historic Brunner Mond company that founded the site in 1874, maintains a soda ash operation at nearby Lostock. These are large-scale chemical operations with their own regulatory frameworks — but the wider cluster of distribution, manufacturing, food production, and logistics businesses that have grown up around Northwich's industrial estates carry significant fire loads of their own, and fall squarely within the scope of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

The Roberts Bakery fire of June 2023 at Gadbrook Park put the industrial fire risk of Northwich's estates into sharp relief. Twelve fire engines from Cheshire Fire and Rescue attended the blaze, which at its height measured 250 metres by 200 metres, with firefighters remaining on site overnight and the fire not being fully extinguished until the following afternoon. The fire affected two manufacturing plants and resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the bakery's production capacity for more than a year, with over 400 jobs at risk. Responsible persons operating in large single-storey food production, distribution, or manufacturing premises face an analogous risk environment — and an analogous consequence if a fire risk assessment has not been produced by a qualified, experienced assessor.

Cheshire West and Chester Council operates mandatory HMO licensing for properties occupied by five or more unrelated people sharing facilities. There is no selective or additional licensing scheme in operation. Our ABBE Level 4 qualified assessors produce documentation that meets the competence standard the council requires for licence applications.

Gadbrook Park and Lostock industrial estates host a concentration of food production, distribution, logistics, and manufacturing operations that give Northwich a fire safety profile more demanding than its modest town-centre footprint might suggest. Large single-storey buildings with significant fuel loads — whether combustible packaging, ingredients, finished product, or process equipment — present a fire risk environment where a fully developed fire can spread rapidly and cause catastrophic damage to the business occupying the premises.

The Roberts Bakery fire demonstrated this with particular clarity. A blaze that started in the roof structure of a food production facility spread to a footprint of 250 by 200 metres before it could be contained, required twelve fire engines and an overnight presence from Cheshire Fire and Rescue, and resulted in damage that curtailed the company's production capacity for over a year and threatened more than 400 jobs. The fire risk assessment for a large food production or distribution premises needs to reflect the actual hazard profile of the building — the fuel loads, the roof construction, the separation between production areas, the detection and suppression arrangements, and the evacuation strategy for shift-based workforces. A generic commercial template will not do.

The town centre and surrounding residential areas present a different but equally real set of fire safety obligations. Northwich's Victorian and Edwardian residential stock, its town centre commercial premises, and its care and hospitality sectors all fall within the scope of the FSO and all face the same enforcement scrutiny from Cheshire Fire and Rescue as premises anywhere else in the county.