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The Prosecution
On 8 September 2025, at Brighton Magistrates' Court, Sawar Hussain — director and appointed responsible person for fire safety at NAASTA, an Indian takeaway in Burgess Hill — was ordered to pay a total of £6,200 following a successful prosecution brought by West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service. The case involved five separate charges under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
An audit of the premises, where people were sleeping at the time, identified a run of serious breaches:
• No suitable fire alarm system in place
• Inadequate means of escape
• Inadequate fire safety arrangements overall
• No evidence that fire alarms or emergency lighting had been tested or maintained
• No evidence that staff had received sufficient fire safety training
By Ferdinand Anton - Principle Fire & Security Consultant
Court: Brighton Magistrates' Court
Date: 8 September 2025
Prosecuting authority: West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service
Defendant: Sawar Hussain, director and responsible person, NAASTA (Burgess Hill)
Charges: Five, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
Outcome: Ordered to pay £6,200
Five charges from one audit isn't a single oversight. It's a pattern — multiple points where fire safety management had simply stopped functioning.
It's worth pausing on what this case actually shows. The story isn't simply "there was no alarm." It's more troubling than that: the findings point to fire safety measures that existed in some form, with nobody around them who understood how to test, maintain, or act on them.
That's a competence failure, not an equipment failure. A fire alarm system nobody understands is barely better than no system at all — arguably worse, because on paper it looks like the job has been done.
What “Competent Person” Actually Means
The Fire Safety Order doesn't just require an alarm system to exist. It requires a competent person managing it — someone with the knowledge, training, and practical experience to genuinely assess risk and keep a system functioning as intended.
The trouble is that “competent” has quietly become shorthand for “holds a certificate.” A certificate proves someone sat an exam and passed it. It doesn't prove they've stood in front of a live addressable panel, traced a genuine fault under time pressure, or carried a real commissioning job from start to finish. That gap is exactly what this case exposes.aper than reactive defense.
The Two-Day Problem
Across the training sector, there's a pattern worth naming directly. Some providers now run the EAL Level 3 Award in Requirements for BS 5839-1:2025 — the core qualification for fire alarm installers and engineers — in as little as two days, at a fraction of the cost of longer programmes.
Two days is enough time to cover the theory and sit a written paper. It isn't enough time to build genuine, hands-on familiarity with the range of systems an engineer will actually meet on site. Fast, cheap, and high-volume works as a business model for the provider. It doesn't work as a model for producing someone who can walk onto a live installation and know what they're looking at.
None of this is a knock on the qualification itself — EAL Level 3 is a solid, recognised standard. It's a reason to ask what actually happened during the days it took to get there.
What Five Full Days Looks Like
At London Fire and Security Training, the EAL Level 3 Award in Requirements for BS 5839-1:2025 runs across five full days, combining the required theory with genuine hands-on time on addressable and conventional fire detection and alarm systems — fundamentals, programming, and testing on the panels engineers actually encounter in the field, including Advanced, Morley, and C-Tec.
We see a lot of qualified electricians and fire safety professionals come through this course, and it's rarely a coincidence — they already understand the value of real time on real equipment before being expected to put their name to a system. The aim isn't to produce someone who can pass an exam. It's to produce someone who, standing in front of an unfamiliar panel on a real job, has done this before.
What This Means for You
If you're an installer or engineer choosing a course, the questions worth asking before you book are straightforward: how many days does it actually run, how many of those hours are on live panels rather than in a classroom, and which manufacturers' systems will you get real hands-on time with?
If you're a building owner or responsible person choosing who to hire, ask the same questions about the person quoting for your job. A certificate on a company website tells you someone passed something. It doesn't tell you what they can actually do when your system throws a genuine fault.
Train Where the System Actually Lives
The EAL Level 3 Award in Requirements for BS 5839-1:2025 at London Fire and Security Training runs across five full days, combining the required theory with genuine hands-on time on addressable and conventional fire detection and alarm systems — fundamentals, programming, and testing on the panels engineers actually meet on site, including Advanced, Morley, and C-Tec.
Phone: 0333 006 4005
Email: hello@londonfireandsecuritytraining.co.uk
Book: bookwhen.com/cubetrainingrecruitment
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