FRA FAQ
The duty holder named in the legislation is legally responsible: the employer for workplace risk assessments, and under fire law the responsible person, usually the freeholder, management company or managing agent of a block. The work can be delegated; the legal duty cannot.
Finding the duty holder
In a workplace, the employer carries the general risk assessment duty and is normally the responsible person for fire as well. Where nobody is employed on the premises, fire responsibility follows control: the person managing the building or, failing that, the owner. The same logic decides the equivalent dutyholder roles in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the analysis travels across the UK.
In residential blocks the usual candidates are the freeholder, a residents' management company, a right to manage company, or the managing agent whose contract hands them control of the common parts. More than one of them can hold duties at the same time, which is why who is the responsible person in a fire risk assessment is worth settling before any work is commissioned. Leaseholders and residents, by contrast, are almost never the duty holder for the shared areas, however closely they follow how the block is run.
Delegation
A duty holder can, and often should, appoint a competent person to carry out the assessment, whether an in-house specialist or an external consultant. What they cannot do is transfer the statutory duty. If the assessment is missing, out of date or inadequate, notices and prosecutions name the duty holder, not the consultant who held the pen. Directors and managers can also be prosecuted personally where an offence is committed with their consent or connivance, or is attributable to their neglect.
Since Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, choosing the assessor carefully is itself part of the fire duty: a responsible person must not appoint someone who lacks the competence to assess the building in question. Where an appointed assessment later proves defective, the consequences are set out in who is responsible if a fire risk assessment is not suitable and sufficient.
FAQ
Yes. Where the management agreement gives the agent control of the premises, fire safety duties attach to the agent alongside the freeholder or management company. Control is judged on the facts rather than on job titles, so agents should check what their contracts hand them before assuming the duty sits elsewhere.
They carry professional responsibility for the quality of their work and can face contractual or negligence claims if it is defective. The statutory duty to have a suitable and sufficient assessment stays with the duty holder throughout, so both parties can be exposed at once for different failures.
Each employer assesses the risks of their own undertaking, and whoever controls the shared parts is responsible for those. Health and safety and fire law both require the parties to cooperate, coordinate and share information, so overlapping duties are managed by agreement rather than by one party absorbing the rest.
FRA Flow keeps site evidence, drafted findings and reviewer sign-off in one place, so duty holders can point to a clear assessment trail. Free tier, no card.
