FRA FAQ
Most UK buildings need their fire risk assessment reviewed at least annually and redone in full on a risk-based cycle, with an immediate review after any significant change. The law names no fixed interval; the annual habit is established practice rather than statute.
Setting by setting
Managed housing runs the tightest calendars. Social landlords and block managers typically put every building on an annual review, because a year is short enough to catch wear, vandalism and management drift, and regulators and insurers both recognise the rhythm without argument. Higher-risk stock moves faster: high-rise residential buildings often get a full reassessment each year, while simple low-rise blocks with a clean history stretch the reassessment out and rely on the annual review in between.
HMOs sit at the demanding end for a different reason: occupants change constantly, and each change can invalidate assumptions about escape familiarity and about cooking, smoking and charging habits. Licensing teams often expect fire precautions to be revisited yearly, and some councils write a frequency into licence conditions. Workplaces are steadier; most fold the fire risk assessment into the general health and safety calendar, alongside the broader cycles described in how often should risk assessments be done, and review after any change of layout, process or staffing.
Reviews versus reassessments
An annual review that concludes nothing material has changed, recorded with a date and a signature, satisfies the duty for another cycle. What it cannot do is rescue an assessment that was inadequate on the day it was written, or postpone a reassessment the building is due on risk grounds. Treating a ten-minute review as a substitute for the periodic deep look is one of the patterns that leaves a responsible person exposed when something goes wrong.
Trigger events cut across every calendar. Refurbishment or remedial works, fire or smoke damage, a switch between stay put and simultaneous evacuation, new information about the external walls, and the arrival of residents with different escape needs each call for a significant change review at once, with a post-incident review reserved for fires and near misses. On top of all that, buildings over 11 metres carry fixed door-check duties whatever the assessment cycle says.
FAQ
No law names an interval for HMOs any more than for other premises. Yearly reassessment is common because occupancy churn quickly erodes an assessment's assumptions, and because licensing authorities expect active management of fire precautions. Check the licence itself: where a council has written a review frequency into conditions, breaching it is enforceable regardless of fire legislation.
Effectively yes. The new document becomes the current assessment and reviews run from its date. It must record who carried it out as well as the full findings and measures, which Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 has required of every responsible person since October 2023.
For residential buildings over 11 metres, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require quarterly checks of communal fire doors and annual best-endeavours checks of flat entrance doors. They run continuously alongside the assessment cycle, and their results are exactly the sort of evidence the next review should read.
FRA Flow holds the review calendar for every building and captures the dated conclusion each review has to leave behind. Starts free for UK assessors.
