How Often Should a Fire Risk Assessment Be Reviewed?

How often should a fire risk assessment be reviewed?

Twelve months. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 does not name an interval, it requires the responsible person to review the fire risk assessment “regularly so as to keep it up to date”, and an annual review is the standard that assessors, fire and rescue authorities and insurers work to. The review must happen sooner if the building, the people in it or the fire precautions change, or if there is any reason to think the assessment is no longer valid. The review date is written into the assessment itself, and twelve months is the latest it should be.

What does the law actually say about reviewing an assessment?

Article 9(3) of the Fire Safety Order sets two tests. The assessment must be reviewed regularly, and it must be reviewed “particularly if” there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid, or there has been a significant change in the matters it relates to, including changes, extensions or conversions to the premises or to the way work is organised. Where a review shows changes are needed, the responsible person must make them.

The word “regularly” is deliberately undefined. The Order applies to everything from a corner shop to a hospital, and Parliament left the interval to the judgement of the person who knows the building. That flexibility cuts both ways: an enforcing officer will ask why a given interval was chosen, and “we had not got round to it” is not an answer.

Since 1 October 2023 the record-keeping side is stricter. Article 9(6), as amended by the Building Safety Act 2022, requires every responsible person to record the assessment and each review in full, including the findings, the measures taken or planned, and any group of people identified as especially at risk. The old exemption for employers with fewer than five staff has gone. A review that happens in someone’s head and is never written down does not count.

What review interval do assessors work to?

Twelve months is the standard, and for good reason. It lines up with the annual servicing cycle for fire alarm systems, emergency lighting and extinguishers, so the assessor can check the maintenance records and the building in one visit. It is short enough that gradual drift, such as a fire door propped open for months or storage creeping into an escape corridor, gets caught before it becomes the norm.

Treat twelve months as a ceiling, not a target. BS 9792:2025, the code of practice for fire risk assessment in housing, says the interval is a matter for the assessor’s judgement and the level of risk, and that for the highest-risk premises a completely new assessment every year is appropriate. Buildings with sleeping accommodation, residents who would need help to evacuate, or complex fire protection arrangements should be reviewed more often than once a year, not less. Non-housing premises assessed under PAS 79-1:2020 follow the same logic: the assessor records the date by which the assessment must be reviewed, and the responsible person keeps to it.

What forces a review before the planned date?

The planned date is the latest point, not the only one. BS 9792 lists the events that make an assessment stop being valid, and they apply just as well to offices, shops and care homes as to flats:

• A material alteration to the building. An extension, a change of layout, a new mezzanine, a compartment wall removed, a new lift shaft.
• A change in the people or the use. New tenants, a change from offices to residential, a nursery opening on the ground floor, more residents who would need help to evacuate.
• A change to the fire precautions. A new alarm system, sprinklers installed, fire doors replaced, a new evacuation strategy.
• Any reason to suspect the assessment is wrong. A fire, however small. A near miss. Building work that may have breached compartmentation. A maintenance backlog.
• A request from the fire and rescue authority or another regulator.

One trigger is easy to miss: gradual change. Staff turnover, small layout tweaks and a slow decline in housekeeping can add up to a building that no longer matches its assessment, even though no single event stood out. That is the argument for a regular review even when nothing obvious has happened.

Is a review the same as a new fire risk assessment?

No. A review checks whether the original assessment still holds, confirms which actions from the last action plan have been completed, and records anything that has changed. It is quicker and cheaper than a new assessment because it builds on the existing one.

A new assessment starts from scratch, with a full inspection of the building. BS 9792 suggests that typically no more than two reviews should be carried out before the next complete assessment, and that a new assessment is appropriate as soon as the chain of reviews becomes unwieldy or a previous assessment turns out not to have involved a full inspection. If your assessor has only ever reviewed the same document for six years, ask when it was last done properly.

What should the review record show?

A review is only as good as its paper trail. Following BS 9792 Clause 20, a documented review should record:

• the name of the assessor who carried out the review and the date;
• who was consulted for information at the time of the review;
• which actions from the previous action plan have been completed, and which remain outstanding;
• what has changed since the original assessment and whether the findings still stand;
• how many reviews have been carried out since the last complete assessment;
• the date by which the next review is due.

The original assessment together with its reviews forms the audit trail that shows fire safety has been kept under control over time. That trail is what an enforcing officer, an insurer or a coroner will ask for, in that order of likelihood.

What happens if a fire risk assessment is not reviewed?

Failing to review is a breach of Article 9, and where that failure puts people at risk of death or serious injury it is an offence under Article 32. Fire and rescue authorities usually start with advice or an enforcement notice, but prosecutions for out-of-date or missing assessments are regular, and since 1 October 2023 fines are unlimited in the magistrates’ court as well as the Crown Court. The more practical risk is that an out-of-date assessment gives everyone false comfort: the action plan has been ticked off, but the building has moved on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a fire risk assessment expire?

Not in law. It becomes invalid when it no longer reflects the building, the people or the precautions, or when the review date written into it has passed without a review. An assessment whose review date has passed is out of date, and you would struggle to defend it.

Do I need a fire risk assessment every year?

You need a review at least every year, and a new assessment whenever the reviews can no longer be relied on, which BS 9792 puts at no more than two reviews in a row. Higher-risk buildings need reviews more often than annually.

Can the responsible person review the assessment themselves?

A review is a fresh judgement on whether the findings still hold, and it needs the same competence as the assessment itself. Use the assessor who wrote the original or another competent assessor, and do so sooner than twelve months when anything in the building, its occupants or its precautions changes. The responsible person’s role is to keep the review date, report changes to the assessor, and act on the findings. The government consulted between March and June 2026 on mandatory certification for fire risk assessors in England, including whether responsible persons should keep the right to assess their own premises, and the direction of travel is towards certified assessors only.

Does the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 set a review interval?

No. Those regulations add duties for responsible persons in multi-occupied residential buildings, such as checking fire doors and sharing information with residents and the fire and rescue service, but the review frequency of the fire risk assessment itself remains governed by Article 9 of the Fire Safety Order.

Should the assessment be reviewed after a fire?

Yes, always, including after a fire that was put out quickly. A fire is direct evidence that something in the assessment, the precautions or the management did not work as expected.

FireRecord records a review due date against every assessment, keeps each generated version of the report archived, and tracks the action plan from Open to Complete so the next review starts from what actually happened rather than from memory. Find out more at firerecord.co.uk.