FRA FAQ
In law, yes: the UK has no licence, register or mandatory qualification for writing risk assessments. In practice the bar is competence, meaning enough knowledge, experience and training to understand the specific activity or building being assessed, with the responsible person reviewing and owning the result.
The competence bar
The three ingredients reinforce each other and none substitutes for the others. Knowledge means understanding the hazards, the relevant law and the guidance for the premises type. Experience means having assessed comparable buildings often enough to recognise what normal looks like and what does not. Training keeps both current as standards move, which for fire has been constant in recent years: is risk assessment a legal requirement sketches how wide the underlying duties now run.
Recognising your own limits is part of the definition, not an admission of failure. A competent author declines work outside their range, records the boundaries of what they inspected, and flags questions needing specialist input, such as external wall construction. For fire there are also external markers: third-party accreditation and professional registers give evidence rather than assurances, and who can do a fire risk assessment for flats lists the schemes that matter for blocks.
Not a solo act
The people who know the premises day to day hold information no inspection uncovers: the caretaker knows which door gets propped open, the housing officer knows which resident hoards, the maintenance contractor knows which alarm faults keep recurring. An author who never asks them produces a tidier document and a weaker assessment. Involving them is standard method, not a courtesy.
However many people contribute, the responsible person must review the result, endorse it and fund its action plan, because the legal duty cannot be delegated along with the drafting. That review is also the quality gate: an owner who reads the assessment closely enough to challenge it usually catches the generic sections and unowned actions that sink documents, a discipline can I write my own risk assessment explores from the record side.
FAQ
Not a statutory one. For fire, voluntary third-party schemes fill the gap: BAFE SP205 for organisations, the IFE registers for individuals and FRACS certification. They are evidence of competence rather than legal requirements, and the new British standard for fire risk assessors explains the benchmark behind them.
Yes, if they genuinely understand the activity being assessed and someone senior reviews and owns the output. Seniority is not competence and neither is its absence. Pairing a junior author with the people who do the work, then routing the draft through the duty holder for approval, is a perfectly sound arrangement.
No. A negligent consultant may face their own consequences, but the statutory duty to have a suitable and sufficient assessment stays with the duty holder who appointed them. Who is legally responsible for a risk assessment follows that chain of responsibility properly.
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