Forums > Social Chat > Fire law UK.

Posted: 29th Apr 2002
the only probs i've had is having my staff and snatched by a policeman when spinning in town. Which i can understand...

i dont truly know the laws and stuff but ive not heard of much trouble regarding spinning anyway. And as long as you're not stupid (i.e. dont fire spin right next to a 100yr old national trust protected oak)and dont backchat the copper you should be fine.

But wait until some of the sheffield poiers have replied first. They tend to know more about this type of stuff...

vic xx

ex-hop-aholic, now inconsistent lurker...

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
Voila! My first successful search. This is a really old post, but does anyone else have any more info on the fire laws and restrictions in the UK?

"I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.." - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
The only laws I am aware of is if you are spinning fire for performance or personal pleasure in a public place you will need public liabilty insurance. Once you have this you can spin fire pretty much anywhere on local Authority land. I find the police are usually fine so long as you have some kind of fire extinguisher and are willing to discuss with them what you are doing (assuming you don't give them bad attitude).



I think you can spin on any private land so long as you have the land owners permission.



As for Common land I don't think that this exists anymore. All common land now comes under the jurisdiction of the local authority or council. The ancient bylaws of passage and animal grazing still apply on common land so I think fire twirling would be tolerated if the area is safe for fires.



However, a lot of (previously) common land is on old peat bogs, e.g. Nine Ladies Stone Circle area in Derbyshire, which is highly flammable and a fire can burn deep underground making it near impossible to put out so beware. In areas such as this there are usually signs denoting that the lighting of fires is prohibited.



If anyone has any further information regarding the laws in the UK I'd be interested to read it.

Are we nearly there yet?

Posted: 3rd Jun 2005
I started a thread on this in the Staff Forums (wrong place, I know, but I was a newbie and had not yet learned the magic of Durbsing )

[Old link]

Some advice from Strugz and Mags there.

I tried contacting Barnet council but got one-sentence answers which tantamounted to "No". Might do it anyway, yah boo sucks to them

Posted: 4th Jun 2005

Your really going to have to examine local by laws for this one, in particular and rather obviously restrictions on fire use both on public / common or council owned land and probably by laws relating to meetings etc. As I understand it public liability insurance is technically not a requirement unless your performing to and or involved in any way with a group(s),

I perform fire and non fire arts professionally as well as teaching, so I have to have it, I would recomend getting PLI even if not involved in the performance aspects of fire, since if your actions result in damage(s) to person(s) or property(s) in any form you will be liable, if someone slips on some parafin residue a few days later, then your still likely to be liable etc.

If your going to work with fire, with or without PLI, then there are at some point or other your going to be approached by either the police and or fire departments, I'm not sure about other areas, but on the Isle of Wight they tend to be fairly laid back towards the activites of fire artist(s).

Anyway if and when this happens, they are going to want to know and see evidence that your behaving in a responsible fashion, in my dealings with the police i have never once been asked to produce my PLI document, and anyway PLI does not alone safe practice make.

What they are probably going to want to see is evidence of competence to conduct yourself in a 'professional' manner, make sure you have things available such as a written risk assesment(s), statement(s) of safe practice, site plan and if there are more than yourselve taking part, then a general layout of practice.

As well as the presence of good safety procedures and equip, have a look on this site under fire safety, can be found on the home page, there are some really good articles.

The local police are well aware of my activites, and the activities of the group I work with, they have before come and watched us practice, never been asked to move on or cease what we're doing, it's worth putting a courtesy call in to the local pol though if your organising a large meet, that way when some unsuspecting memeber of the public calls the fire or police to inform them there is a group of people playing with fire......etc

mark

Posted: 5th Jun 2005
i usualy spin it up at raves with fire...... and if the police do make an appearance i tend to go and speak to them as politly as possible, about what i'm doing, how many are involved and the area i intend on doing it. its usualy forrestry commision land so it can be a tinder box in some places so i always spin on the tracks and well away from the trees, cars and most importantly the sound system!!!!

Posted: 5th Jun 2005
Off topic, sorry but Ravehead, I've just spent a few minutes watching your avatar and I'm having to tear my eyes away Kewl.

Posted: 6th Jun 2005
sweet dude!!!
sorry for being off topic.

off topic again i got a filthy hard house tune with loads of samples of ed209.... its called roboco(k on an anne savage cd