Fire-Safe Halloween Decorating: A Checklist for Pubs & Restaurants

What is on this page

• Read your own fire risk assessment first
• What burns, and what to use instead
• Walk your escape route before you decorate
• Lighting and sockets
• No naked flame, anywhere near it
• Stop at the pass
• Five minutes before you open
• Take it down with the same care

1. Read your own fire risk assessment first

Seasonal decorating sits inside your assessment, not outside it. A display is not exempt because it is only up for three weeks.

Five minutes with your own document, or a word with whoever holds it, before you order anything. If your assessment says nothing about temporary decorations, that is the thing to flag.

2. What burns, and what to use instead

• Cobweb, spray or webbing. Flammable. Nowhere near a bulb, heater, candle or the pass. If a surface is warm to the touch, keep cobweb off it.
• Paper and fabric. Bunting, garland and banners go up faster than plastic. Keep them off lighting rigs and radiators.
• Anything near the bar or kitchen. Look for a flame retardant label and check it rather than assuming, because plenty of Halloween decor does not carry one.
• Straw, dried foliage, loose netting. Not near anything that can ignite it.

3. Walk your escape route before you decorate

Easy to get wrong while thinking about the look. A prop over an exit sign. A floor decoration narrowing a corridor. Garland across an extinguisher bracket.

Nothing covers a fire exit, an extinguisher, a call point or emergency lighting, and nothing makes a route narrower. Walk it and ask whether somebody could get out fast, in the dark, in a hurry. The same walk catches the accessibility problems: keep props clear of doorways and ramps.

4. Lighting and sockets

• Anything that plugs in should be PAT tested and BS marked. Decorative lights bought for a one-off are not automatically fine on a commercial circuit.
• Do not chain extension leads together to reach the far corner. Fewer, properly rated circuits.
• Switch it off at close. Nothing decorative runs overnight in an empty building.
• LED or battery throughout. It runs cool, which takes most of the risk out of everything above.

5. No naked flame, anywhere near it

The simplest line on this page. If you decorate, take the real candles off the tables for the night.

LED tealights give you the same flicker without an open flame sitting next to a paper menu or a run of cobweb. If candles are part of how your room normally looks, Halloween is the night to swap them.

6. Stop at the pass

Nothing flammable near grills, fryers, extraction or hot surfaces. Most kitchens already work this way, so keep it that way.

If staff are in costume, check nothing restricts their vision or catches on a handle, and that a mask does not slow anybody down getting through a fire door.

7. Five minutes before you open

Worth doing on the night, not only on the day it went up. Things get knocked, moved and re-hung by the second week of October.

• Fire exits and escape routes clear
• Extinguishers, call points and emergency lighting visible
• Nothing touching or draped over a light, heater or hot surface
• All plugged-in lighting working, no overloaded sockets
• Nothing loose enough to trail, drop or blow into a walkway

8. Take it down with the same care

A garland that has come down in the night blocks a route just as well as one you hung there.

Give the strip-down five minutes of attention rather than doing it at two in the morning after a busy night.

The whole thing on one page

• Display checked against our fire risk assessment
• Nothing flammable near a bulb, heater, candle or the pass
• Fire exits, escape routes, extinguishers and call points clear
• Lighting PAT tested, on rated circuits, no chained extension leads
• LED or battery throughout, no naked flame near decorations
• Costumes and masks do not restrict vision or movement
• Five minute walk-through before opening
• Take-down planned so nothing is left blocking a route overnight