A fire risk assessment is a legal record as much as a piece of advice. This guide sets out a workflow that takes a practice from instruction to an issued, defensible report, at the volume a working practice has to handle.
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. Most Responsible Persons commission a competent assessor to do it. The report that assessor produces is the document that gets examined afterwards, by the fire and rescue authority on an audit, by an insurer after a claim, and in the worst case by a coroner. How it was produced is part of whether it holds.
The documentation burden rose in October 2023. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 amended the Order so that the Responsible Person must record the full fire risk assessment rather than only its significant findings, along with the fire safety arrangements, and must identify the assessor. For a practice, that means every assessment now has to be written up completely, every time, and the assessor's name is on it.
A practice doing a few hundred assessments a year runs the same loop on each one: instruction, scheduling, site visit, write-up, quality check, issue. Done in Word and email with photos on phones, the loop fails in predictable places. A review date gets missed because it lived in a spreadsheet. Photos never make it off a handset. Two assessors write the same building two different ways. Reports wait in a QA queue nobody can see. None of those is an assessment failure; all of them become one when the report is challenged.
Treat each assessment as a case that moves through defined stages, with the evidence attached to it as it goes. The instruction creates the case and fixes its scope. The site visit adds the structured findings and the photographs. The write-up produces the report from what was captured rather than from memory. QA is a stage with a named reviewer, not a favour asked in a corridor. Issue records who received the report and when, and sets the review date that starts the next cycle.
The report is generated from the case rather than typed into a document. That is what makes consistency possible across assessors, and what makes the full record the law now requires a by-product of doing the work rather than an extra task at the end. Every section of PAS 79 that applies to the premises becomes a section of the case, and the report reads the case.
The same structure gives the practice its operational view: what is scheduled this week, what is back from site and waiting to be written, what is in QA and with whom, what was issued and when it is due for review. That visibility is what lets a practice take on more work without adding a second office manager.
Follow these steps to set up a workflow that runs every assessment the same way, from the first call to the issued report and on to its review date.
Record the premises, the Responsible Person, the building type and use, the number of storeys and occupants, and the scope agreed. For residential buildings, record which of the Type 1 to Type 4 scopes used in residential work applies, since that decides whether flat interiors and the construction are in scope. A scope fixed at instruction stops the visit and the report drifting apart later.
Assign the assessor by the competence the building needs rather than by who happens to be free. A purpose-built block of flats over 11 metres, a care home and a warehouse call for different experience, and the Responsible Person is entitled to ask how the assessor was chosen. Then route visits geographically so an assessor is not crossing the county twice in a day.
Give the assessor a site form that mirrors the sections of PAS 79 that apply: means of escape, fire detection and warning, emergency lighting, signage, fire doors, compartmentation, management arrangements, and the rest. Each observation is recorded where it will appear in the report, with the photograph attached to the finding it supports. Nothing is transcribed later.
The report is produced from the captured findings, with the significant findings and the action plan drawn from the observations the assessor flagged. Hazards, people at risk, existing measures, the evaluation and the actions all come from the site data. The assessor edits and signs; they do not start from a blank page.
A second competent person reviews the report before issue: scope matched, findings supported by photographs, priorities consistent with the practice's banding, actions specific enough to act on. The reviewer is named on the case, the review is recorded, and a report cannot move to issue without it.
Issue the report to the Responsible Person and record who received it, when, and how. The Order expects the Responsible Person to hold the assessment and, where they leave, to hand it to their successor, so the practice's record of issue matters. Set the review date at issue and let it start the next cycle automatically.
The action plan is where the assessment turns into safer premises. Create each action as a tracked item with a priority, an owner and a target date, and chase it. Whether the practice re-inspects or simply records what the client reports, the assessment case should show what became of every finding.
Every practice that has drifted into several report templates has done so by accident. Hold one, version it, and name the person who changes it. When guidance or the law moves, the change is made once.
A finding that says what was observed, why it matters and what to do, in that order, gets acted on. A finding that cites a clause and stops there gets filed. The audience is a building manager, not another assessor.
Whatever banding the practice uses, define it once, apply it everywhere and print the definitions in the report. Consistency across assessors is what makes a portfolio comparable.
A report that shows compliant fire doors and clear escape routes as well as the defects is a fairer record of the building on the day, and a stronger one if the building changes afterwards.
The Responsible Person is entitled to ask whether the assessor was competent for the building. Qualifications, registrations, CPD and the building types each assessor is signed off for belong in one place that can be produced on request.
A review date that lives in a diary leaves with the person who kept it. A review date on the case starts the reminder cycle on its own.
Set turnaround targets for write-up, QA and issue, and timings for review reminders.
The law does not give a number, which is why practices get asked the question so often. This guide sets out what the Order requires, what triggers a review, and how a practice keeps hundreds of review cycles running without one slipping.
fire safetyAn assessment is only as good as what happens to its findings. This guide sets out how to turn the action plan into tracked work with owners, dates and evidence, across every client the practice holds.
fire safetySince October 2023 a Responsible Person may only appoint a competent person to help with their fire risk assessment. This guide sets out how a practice evidences competence for every assessor and every building, and how it checks reports before they go out.
Bring us a real instruction and we will show you what it looks like as a case, from the site form to the issued report and the review date that follows it.
