FRA FAQ
Yes, for your own home: UK fire and rescue services run free home fire safety visits that check smoke alarms and escape plans. What they do not provide is the statutory fire risk assessment a responsible person must have for a workplace or the common parts of a block.
The free visit
The visit is domestic advice done properly, not an inspection with consequences: nothing is enforced and nothing is certificated, because the point is prevention. Individual private dwellings sit outside the Fire Safety Order, so there is no statutory assessment to carry out inside your own flat or house; the visit fills that space with practical help, is booked directly with your local fire and rescue service, and is genuinely free, with no sales agenda attached.
The boundary is the flat front door. Inside the dwelling, fire safety is advice territory; beyond it, shared staircases, corridors and plant rooms are common parts and need a real assessment under the Order, a line that do I need a fire risk assessment if there are no common parts approaches from the other direction. A block cannot rely on residents having had home visits; the common parts duty exists regardless of what happens inside each flat.
The paid duty
Fire and rescue authorities are the enforcing authority for the Order: they audit assessments and serve notices, so they will not write your FRA for you any more than a tax inspector will file your return. That leaves two legitimate routes for a responsible person: commission a competent person, or self-assess where the premises are simple enough that your own knowledge meets the test, a judgement can I do a fire risk assessment myself works through honestly.
Treat free FRA marketing with care. A free or token-priced survey is usually the front end of something else: an alarm installation contract, remedial works, or a template report that would not survive an audit. Fire certificates are a related trap; they were abolished in 2006, so anyone selling one is selling paper, as do I need a fire safety certificate sets out. Judge any offer against what a proper report contains and what a fair one costs, starting with how much does a fire risk assessment cost in the UK.
FAQ
Contact your local fire and rescue service directly; most run online request forms and phone lines, and many give priority to households at higher risk, such as older residents or people living alone. The visit is free, there is no sales element, and crews often fit smoke alarms on the spot.
Not as a service to you. The fire and rescue authority may audit or inspect the block as the enforcing authority, but an audit checks whether a suitable and sufficient assessment already exists; it does not create one. The duty itself is covered in is it a legal requirement to have a fire risk assessment.
Occasionally a consultancy discounts a first assessment to win a portfolio, but a genuinely free FRA has to be paid for somewhere, usually in the works the report then recommends. Judge any offer by whether the output would pass the suitable and sufficient test, not by the price tag.
FRA Flow gives UK housing assessors and their clients one place for site evidence, AI-drafted reports and reviewer sign-off. The free tier really is free.
