FRA FAQ
Yes, and for fire the law now cares intensely about what you write: since Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 the assessment must be recorded in full, whoever writes it. A defensible document contains the findings, the reasoning, the people at risk, the measures and an action plan.
The recording duty
A complete record covers the premises and how it is used, each significant finding with the evidence behind it, the people identified as especially at risk, and the measures already in place alongside the ones still needed. The reasoning matters as much as the conclusions: a reader should be able to see why a hazard was judged tolerable or why a door failed, rather than the verdict alone.
The action plan is the part that gets tested in real life. Each action needs a priority, an owner and a date, because an unowned action is a finding you have chosen to ignore in writing. Add the author, the date and the review arrangements. What are the 5 things a risk assessment should include gives the generic checklist, and what should a fire risk assessment include expands it for fire.
The classic failure
Downloaded templates fail in a recognisable way: generic hazards nobody removed, sections describing a kitchen the building does not have, and blank fields where local knowledge should be. A record that could describe any premises describes none, and an experienced reader concludes within a page that the inspection never really informed the writing. Common mistakes in risk assessments catalogues the whole pattern.
Templates are legitimate as scaffolding; the failure is leaving the scaffolding visible. The working test is whether a stranger could take your document, locate every finding in the building and follow your reasoning to each action. Whoever drafts it, the responsible person owns the result, so the author question, covered under can anybody write a risk assessment, never displaces the ownership question.
FAQ
Yes. Since October 2023 the duty to record the fire risk assessment in full applies to every responsible person, with no exemption for size of organisation or premises. The old position, where only larger employers had to write everything down, no longer exists for fire, so a single converted house is caught just as a portfolio is.
Rarely on its own. A checklist captures yes and no answers but not reasoning, evidence or priorities, and the law expects the significant findings and measures in full. A checklist supported by photographs, explanations and a dated action plan gets much closer to what suitable and sufficient means in practice.
The responsible person should review it, endorse it and resource the actions, because the duty and the liability sit there whoever typed the text. Who fills out the risk assessment form separates the drafting role from the approval role in more detail.
FRA Flow turns site evidence into a full drafted record: findings, reasoning and action plan, reviewed and signed by a person. Free tier available.
