Guide
How often does a fire risk assessment need to be reviewed or redone?
Updated
The honest answer: the legislation does not set a fixed number of years. It requires the assessment to be reviewed regularly and kept up to date, and specific events force a review. Annual review is common practice, not a statutory deadline.
What the law actually requires
Article 9(3) of the Fire Safety Order 2005 requires the responsible person to review the assessment regularly so as to keep it up to date, and particularly where there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or there has been a significant change in the matters to which it relates. That is the whole statutory test: no fixed interval, no expiry date printed on the report. Any assessor or website quoting a legally required renewal period is going beyond the legislation.
Events that force a review
- Material alterations: layout changes, extensions, new fire doors or compartmentation changes.
- Change of use or occupancy: new tenants, sleeping accommodation introduced, occupancy numbers rising, vulnerable occupants arriving.
- Fire events and near misses, including in similar premises you operate.
- Reason to doubt validity: enforcement correspondence, insurer findings, or defects discovered in precautions the assessment relied on.
A defensible review schedule
- Review annually. A documented annual review, even a short one confirming nothing material has changed, is common practice across the sector and is easy to evidence to an inspecting officer. It is good practice, not a statutory interval, and we'd rather tell you that plainly.
- Reassess on material change, immediately. The events above trigger the statutory review duty whenever they happen, not at the next anniversary.
- Commission a fresh full assessment periodically or when reviews accumulate. Many responsible persons re-run the full assessment every few years, or when successive reviews have patched an ageing document. Sleeping-risk premises sensibly do this more often than low-risk workplaces.
Since October 2023 every assessment and review must be recorded in full (Building Safety Act 2022, s.156), so the review trail itself is part of your compliance evidence. If your current assessment predates the Fire Safety Act 2021 and you manage a residential building, it may not cover external walls and flat entrance doors at all, which is itself reason to suspect it is no longer valid. A review quote costs less than a first assessment; our form reaches assessors who do both.