How often should a fire risk assessment be done?

What the law actually says

In England and Wales the duty sits in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Article 9 requires the responsible person to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to people from fire, and then to keep it current. The review wording is the important part: the assessment must be reviewed regularly so as to keep it up to date, and particularly if there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or there has been a significant change in the matters it relates to.

Article 9 also requires the findings and the measures taken to be recorded, and the record to be made as soon as practicable after the assessment is made or reviewed. An assessment that was reviewed but not written down has not met the duty.

What should trigger a review before the next one is due

The Order names two triggers: reason to suspect the assessment is no longer valid, and a significant change. In a residential block those translate into everyday events, and each of them should lead to a dated review entry rather than waiting for the annual visit:

• A fire, near miss or false alarm pattern that suggests the assessment missed something
• Building works, including refurbishment, new cladding, new windows, altered layouts or new services passing through compartment walls
• A change in how the building is used, or in who lives there, such as a block that begins to house more vulnerable residents
• New or changed fire safety systems, for example a new alarm system or a changed evacuation strategy
• Findings from routine checks, such as failed fire door checks or damaged compartmentation discovered during other works
• A change of responsible person or managing agent, which is a sensible moment to re-confirm that the assessment still reflects the building

Why annual review became the norm

Buildings change faster than a multi-year cycle can track. Doors get replaced, wedged or damaged, penetrations are made for new cabling, and residents change. A yearly review is frequent enough to catch drift and infrequent enough to be practical across a large portfolio, which is why it became the default in the housing sector.

Where the building or the residents carry more risk, a shorter interval is easier to defend than a longer one. Taller blocks, buildings with a stay-put strategy, buildings with known compartmentation problems and buildings with a high proportion of vulnerable residents all justify closer attention.

Other fire safety checks run on different clocks

The assessment review is only one of the recurring items. In England, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 add fixed intervals for fire door checks in taller residential buildings. These are separate duties and they are not satisfied by the FRA review.

The regulations also require the responsible person to keep a record of the steps taken on flat entrance doors, including attempts to gain access. Access refusals are routine, so the evidence of reasonable attempts matters as much as the completed checks.

Alarm and emergency lighting testing sit on their own schedules too. Emergency lighting is covered in our guide to the monthly and annual tests.

FRA types 1 to 4: scope, not frequency

In purpose-built blocks of flats, assessments are commonly described as Type 1 to Type 4. The classification comes from the Local Government Association's guide Fire safety in purpose-built blocks of flats and describes how far the assessment goes, not how often it is done.

A Type 1 assessment is the usual baseline for the yearly review. The higher types are used when there is a reason to look behind the finishes, such as a concern about compartmentation, works history or construction. Because the invasive types usually need access to homes, they are scheduled as projects, not as part of the yearly review.

Higher-risk buildings

In England, a building that is at least 18 metres high or has at least seven storeys, and contains at least two residential units, is a higher-risk building under section 65 of the Building Safety Act 2022. These buildings sit in a more intensive regime administered by the Building Safety Regulator, with additional duties for the accountable person. If one of your blocks meets that test, treat the FRA review as one part of a wider set of obligations, and follow the regulator's guidance directly.

The position in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The Fire Safety Order applies in Wales as it does in England. In Scotland, the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006 cover non-domestic premises, and a stair or passage used in common by more than one dwelling is treated as domestic premises, so most blocks of flats fall outside them. The Scottish Government publishes practical fire safety guidance for existing high-rise domestic buildings. In Northern Ireland the equivalent duty comes from the Fire and Rescue Services (NI) Order 2006 and the Fire Safety Regulations (NI) 2010.

What evidence to keep

• The dated assessment, the assessor's name and the basis on which they are competent
• A review record each time the assessment is reviewed, including a review that found nothing to change
• The action plan, with an owner and a target date for every significant finding
• Evidence that each action was completed, with the date
• The records for door checks and for the other recurring fire safety tasks, kept alongside the assessment

The practical test is whether someone who has never seen your building could read the file and understand what was found, what was done, and when.

Common questions