MAKE YOUR FREE Fire risk assessment

Use this fire risk assessment to structure and record your fire safety risk assessments and procedures. Doing so can help you to ensure the safety of everyone using your premises, and will help you comply with your legal obligations.

A fire risk assessment is a document that demonstrates compliance with the legal obligation, imposed by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, to identify fire safety risks and ensure that appropriate precautions are in place to prevent fire. 

Use this fire risk assessment template to structure and record your fire risk assessment, to help prevent fires, reduce risk, and ensure the safety of everyone who uses (or is near) your premises.

Use this fire risk assessment template if:

• you are in control of:

  • a commercial property, or

  • common parts of a residential property (eg the corridors or stairways between flats, or the cladding on the exterior of an apartment building’s walls)

• you are a 'responsible person' (see below) for fire safety at the premises

• the premises are in England, Wales or Scotland

For more information on the types of premises and the areas of multi-occupied premises that fire risk assessments must be carried out for, read Conducting a fire risk assessment.

This fire risk assessment covers:

• fire hazards identified at the premises

• control measures currently in place at the premises

• who is at risk

• fire safety procedures and training

• keeping fire safety records

You should use this fire risk assessment template to create a new risk assessment even if you already have one in place if: 

• you haven’t updated your risk assessments in a while and they may need reviewing

• you need to update your fire risk assessments to comply with new fire safety laws (eg to analyse fire safety in common parts of multi-occupied premises that must now be considered, following the Fire Safety Act 2021). 

Read Conducting a fire risk assessment for more information.

The main purpose of a fire risk assessment is to prevent fires, reduce risk, and ensure the safety of everybody who uses the premises or who is in its immediate vicinity.

Fire risk assessments are compulsory for certain premises (see above). Any non-compliance can result in significant penalties. For more information, read Conducting a fire risk assessment.

A fire risk assessment should be carried out by a ‘responsible person’. Responsible people can be employers, owners, landlords, or occupiers, or anyone else who has control over a premises. 

If the responsible person is not confident in their ability to perform the fire risk assessment competently, they can arrange for a suitably qualified or experienced person (eg a professional fire risk assessor) to complete the assessment on their behalf (ie a ‘competent person’).

Where there is more than one responsible person, all responsible persons have to work together to meet their responsibilities.

The responsible person should follow certain key steps when using this template to perform a fire risk assessment. These include identifying and controlling risks and regularly reviewing risk assessments.

There are specific criteria for what needs to be taken into account when doing a risk assessment (including which parts of premises must be analysed).

For more information, read Conducting a fire risk assessment.

If your business employs more than 5 people, you must keep a written record of your fire risk assessments.

A fire hazard is anything that could ignite a fire or assist/accelerate the spread of a fire. When assessing the severity of a fire hazard, you should consider:

• the likelihood of a fire occurring, and 

• the significance of the consequences of that fire (eg do lots of people live in the building, in a high density area? Or, is it an industrial warehouse building in an isolated area?)  

Risks can be reduced by various methods including good housekeeping, property maintenance, specially designed machinery, strong emergency procedures, and storage of equipment away from risks.

A fire risk assessment must be regularly reviewed. It should be reviewed as soon as possible if there is a reason to suspect that it is no longer valid. A fire risk assessment may no longer be valid if, for example: 

• there are sufficient changes to the layout of the building

•  there are sufficient changes to the number of people who use the space

• the assessment does not meet newly introduced legal requirements (read Conducting a fire risk assessment for more information)

Ask a lawyer for advice if:

• you have received an enforcement notice from the fire and rescue authority

• you aren’t sure whether you need to carry out a fire risk assessment

• you aren’t sure if your fire risk assessments are up to date with recent legal developments

This fire risk assessment is governed by the law of England and Wales or the law of Scotland.