Compliance guide
Fire risk assessments, explained without the jargon
It is the document every other fire safety decision rests on, and the first thing an inspector asks for. This is what it contains, who can write it, and what makes one adequate.
In short
A fire risk assessment is a structured look at what could start a fire in your building, who would be harmed, and whether your existing precautions are enough. Article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 makes it a legal duty for the Responsible Person, and requires it to be suitable and sufficient. If you employ five or more people, the significant findings must be recorded. It must be reviewed regularly, and immediately whenever the building, its use or its occupancy changes. The person carrying it out must be competent for that building — there is no single qualification, which is exactly why the choice matters.
What a fire risk assessment actually is
It is an organised examination of your premises that identifies fire hazards, identifies the people at risk, evaluates whether existing precautions are adequate, and records what has to change. It is a decision-making document, not a certificate. Nobody passes or fails a fire risk assessment: it produces an action plan.
The most common misunderstanding is that the assessment is a piece of paper you buy in order to be compliant. It is the opposite. The paper is the residue of a process, and the process is where the value sits. An assessor who walks the building, opens the risers, looks above the ceiling tiles and asks what happens at two in the morning produces something useful. One who fills in a template from the car park produces a liability.
You can tell the two apart quickly. A real assessment names your building: the specific rooms, the specific escape routes, the specific hazards. A template assessment reads like it could apply to any premises in the country, because it does.
Who needs one, and when
Almost every non-domestic premises in England and Wales needs one, plus the common parts of blocks of flats and houses in multiple occupation. Offices, shops, restaurants, warehouses, care homes, schools, places of worship and self-catering accommodation are all in scope. Purely domestic single-household homes are outside it.
- You employ anyone. The workplace under your control needs an assessment.
- You are a landlord. The common parts, and anything the lease keeps under your control, need one.
- You run an HMO. The common parts are in scope, and the local authority licensing regime will usually ask for it too.
- You have just moved in, changed layout, or changed what the building is used for. That is a trigger for a fresh assessment, not a review.
The timing that catches people out: the duty starts when you take control of the premises, not when you open for business. Buying a building or signing a lease and then spending three months fitting out is three months during which somebody is the Responsible Person.
What "suitable and sufficient" means
The Order does not define the phrase, deliberately. In practice it means the assessment is proportionate to the risk, specific to your premises, carried out by someone competent for that building, and detailed enough that someone else could act on it. A generic document that names no rooms and identifies no people is neither suitable nor sufficient, whatever it says on the cover.
Proportionality cuts both ways. A single-storey lock-up shop does not need the same depth as a hotel, and paying for the hotel version is money wasted. What it does need is to be about that shop: its layout, its stock, its wiring, the fact that the escape route runs past the fryer.
The five steps an assessor works through
Identify the fire hazards. Identify the people at risk. Evaluate the risk, and decide whether existing precautions remove or reduce it far enough. Record the significant findings and the action plan, and make sure people are informed and trained. Review it, and revise it when things change.
Hazards means sources of ignition, sources of fuel and sources of oxygen. Electrical installations, cooking, heating, hot works, smoking, arson risk from stored waste against an external wall. It is rarely exotic. Most fires start in the ordinary parts of a building.
People at risk is where the assessment stops being a checklist. Someone sleeping on the premises, someone working alone at night, someone who cannot use stairs, a visitor who does not know the building, a child. The precautions that follow are driven by who has to get out and how long it takes them.
Evaluating is the judgement step: detection and warning, escape routes and travel distances, emergency lighting, signage, firefighting equipment, fire doors and compartmentation, and the management arrangements around all of it. This is where an assessor with real system knowledge earns their fee, because "there is a fire alarm" and "the fire alarm is the right category for this building" are very different findings.
Your assessment produced an action list?
The alarm, emergency lighting, extinguisher and fire door work an assessment calls for is what we do. We survey what is there, tell you what the report actually requires, and quote in writing. The survey is free.
Who is allowed to carry one out
Anyone competent for that building, including you, if the premises are simple and you understand them. The Order requires competence, not a licence. For anything with sleeping accommodation, multiple occupancies, complex escape routes or vulnerable people, competence realistically means a professional assessor with relevant training and experience.
Because there is no legal register, the burden is on you to satisfy yourself that whoever you appoint is competent — and to keep the evidence. Ask what qualifications the assessor holds, ask which third-party schemes they are registered with and for which scope, and ask for a sample assessment of a building like yours. A reluctance to show any of the three tells you what you need to know.
Be precise about scope when you check credentials. Third-party schemes are specific: a registration covering fire detection and alarm systems is not a registration covering fire risk assessment, and a company that blurs the two on its website is a company that will blur other things.
What you do with it afterwards
Work through the action plan, in priority order, and record what you did and when. Keep the assessment where you can produce it. Tell your staff what it found that affects them. The assessment is not finished when it is delivered — it is finished when the actions are closed.
An assessment with an open action list two years old is worse than no assessment, because it is written proof that you knew about a hazard and left it. If an action is not going to be done, the honest response is to reassess whether it was necessary, in writing, not to ignore it.
How often it has to be reviewed
Regularly, and whenever there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or the premises have changed significantly. Annual review is the widely used interpretation. Any material change — layout, occupancy, use, process, a new tenant, a refurbishment — triggers a review at the time, regardless of when the last one was.
Reviews are quick when nothing has changed and the paperwork is in order. They are slow and expensive when three years of small alterations have to be reconstructed from memory. Keeping a simple log of building changes is the cheapest fire safety measure available to you.
Read next
Who is the Responsible Person?
The duty lands on a specific person, defined by control rather than job title. How to tell whether that person is you.
Read the guide Compliance guideFire door checks and the 2022 Regulations
Quarterly and annual checks in multi-occupied residential buildings over 11 metres, and what a check has to cover.
Read the guide Compliance guideHow often must a fire alarm be serviced?
Two visits a year, plus a weekly test you do yourself. Where those numbers come from.
Read the guideFire risk assessments, your questions answered
Is a fire risk assessment a legal requirement?
Yes. Article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the Responsible Person to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed. It applies to almost all non-domestic premises in England and Wales, and to the common parts of blocks of flats and houses in multiple occupation.
Does the assessment have to be written down?
If you employ five or more people, if you hold a licence, or if an alterations notice is in force, the significant findings must be recorded. In practice, record it regardless. An assessment you cannot produce is very hard to distinguish from one that was never done.
Who is qualified to carry out a fire risk assessment?
The Order requires the assessor to be competent, and does not define a single qualification. Competence means the training, knowledge and experience appropriate to the building in front of them. A simple single-storey office and a six-storey mixed-use block are not the same job, and neither are the people who should assess them.
How often does a fire risk assessment need reviewing?
The Order says it must be reviewed regularly, and again whenever there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or there has been a significant change. Annual review is the common interpretation. A change of layout, occupancy, use or process triggers a review whenever it happens, not at the anniversary.
What is the difference between a fire risk assessment and a fire alarm service?
The assessment decides what the building needs. The service keeps what is installed working. An assessment may conclude your alarm category is wrong for the building, which no amount of servicing will fix, and servicing records are evidence the assessment asks to see.
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