Standards transition guide
BS 9792:2025 replaced PAS 79-2 as the recognised housing fire risk assessment methodology in early 2025. This guide is the working comparison: section-by-section differences, transition implications for assessors, reviewers, compliance teams, and software, and a practical migration plan for an FRA programme already running on PAS 79 templates.
Status
PAS 79-2:2020 (housing) and PAS 79-1:2020 (general buildings) were both withdrawn by BSI when BS 9792:2025 came into force. The PAS documents are no longer maintained references. Existing FRA reports produced under PAS 79 remain valid until their next periodic review; new assessments going forward should be conducted under BS 9792.
For housing-focused work specifically, the relevant successor is BS 9792-2 (the housing part of BS 9792:2025). For non-housing buildings (offices, retail, industrial, education, healthcare, hospitality), the successor is BS 9792-1, which is the rebrand of PAS 79-1:2020 with the additional refinements that came with the BS publication step.
In practical terms, this means a working assessor who was producing PAS 79-shaped reports through 2024 should be producing BS 9792-shaped reports through 2026. The transition is not optional; it is operational. Landlord clients, insurers, and tribunals are already moving to expect BS 9792-aligned outputs as the default, and the PAS 79 era is closed.
Methodology comparison
The methodological backbone is recognisable from PAS 79. Identify hazards. Identify people at risk. Evaluate the risk. Record significant findings. Plan an action plan. Review periodically. A working PAS 79 assessor reading BS 9792:2025 for the first time will not feel they are learning a different discipline. The shape of the assessment is the same.
What changes is the explicit articulation of several elements that PAS 79 left more implicit. The evidence model is now explicit: every significant finding should be traceable to its source observation and supporting evidence, not bundled into prose with the trail living somewhere else. The competence framework is now explicit: competence is a combination of training, qualification, experience, and continuing development, assessed in the round and referenced against PAS 7:2024. The output report shape is now explicit: the order of sections, the inclusion of a competent-person sign-off block, and the audit trail expectations are spelled out.
For an experienced PAS 79 assessor, the transition is more about discipline than re-learning. The work that good assessors were already doing (linking evidence to findings, exercising judgement on residual risk, reviewing competently) is now what the standard explicitly requires rather than what good practice implied.
Section-level differences
BS 9792 is more explicit about what the building description should cover (height, construction, occupancy profile, fire strategy, escape routes, compartmentation, fire detection, known limitations) than PAS 79 was.
The hazard identification structure remains familiar. BS 9792 sharpens the expectation that behavioural and structural hazards are both addressed explicitly, not collapsed into a single category.
Each significant finding now carries its evidence by default. Where PAS 79 allowed prose-only findings, BS 9792 expects each finding to be traceable to the observation, location, and evidence that justifies it.
The action plan structure (priority, timeframe, responsible party) remains broadly the same. BS 9792 is more explicit about what a "reasonable" timeframe means in different priority bands.
BS 9792 makes the competent-person sign-off block more explicit than PAS 79 did, with an expectation that the assessor and the reviewer both record their competence basis.
The two-track model (periodic plus significant change) is the same. BS 9792 sharpens the language on what counts as a significant change trigger.
Operational implications
For an in-house compliance team or contracted consultancy already running an FRA programme under PAS 79, the practical implications are operational rather than theoretical. The first cycle of annual reviews after the BS 9792 transition is the moment new assessments go out under the new standard. Existing PAS 79 reports remain valid until the building's next periodic review, at which point the new assessment is conducted under BS 9792 and the prior PAS 79 report is referenced in the audit trail.
Templates and software tooling shaped around PAS 79 need to either be migrated or replaced. Word templates, form libraries, and report generation engines built around PAS 79 vocabulary and structure can be updated, but the update is non-trivial. For some teams, the standards transition is also an opportunity to replace the underlying software with a BS 9792-shaped product rather than retrofitting the existing toolset.
Competent reviewer practice continues largely unchanged at the methodology level, but the audit trail expectations strengthen. A reviewer signing off a BS 9792 report should now expect every significant finding to be verifiable against its source evidence in the system, rather than trusted on the assessor's prose alone. Software that surfaces the evidence link operationally helps the reviewer; software that does not forces them back to manual cross-checking.
Migration patterns
The cleanest migration pattern we see in practice is operational rather than retrospective. Teams adopt BS 9792 for new assessments and annual reviews from a chosen start date. Existing PAS 79 reports remain on file as historical records; they do not need to be retroactively redone. As the periodic review cycle turns through one full year, every active FRA in the portfolio moves to BS 9792-shaped without a big-bang rewrite.
For consultancies serving multiple housing landlord clients, the transition runs in parallel with client communications. Most landlord clients are aware of the standards change; some have updated their procurement documentation already, others have not. A pragmatic consultancy uses the transition as an opportunity to brief clients on the new standard alongside their first BS 9792-shaped report, positioning the consultancy as ahead of the curve rather than reacting to a vendor change.
For social housing providers and council housing teams, the transition often coincides with broader regulatory changes (the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, tightened Regulator of Social Housing inspections, the operational implications of the Building Safety Act 2022 for HRBs). Adopting BS 9792 alongside other regulatory readiness work is more efficient than treating it as a standalone project.
Software implications
Software shaped around PAS 79 is not invalid by virtue of the standards transition, but it is increasingly behind. The underlying methodology is similar enough that a PAS 79-positioned tool can produce a BS 9792-compliant report with template adjustments. The deeper question is whether the data model, the workflow patterns, and the audit grade the software supports actually match what BS 9792:2025 expects rather than carrying it as an option.
A BS 9792-shaped software product treats the standard's evidence model as the data model. Observations attach to the right BS 9792 section as they are recorded. Significant findings carry their evidence by default. The reviewer queue is exception-led and competent-person-aware. The output report is a BS 9792-shaped PDF with the audit trail attached. AI-assisted drafting, where present, traces every drafted line back to its source observation. The standard is the shape of the software, not a configuration option layered on top.
FRA Flow is one example of this approach. Other vendors are catching up at varying speeds. For teams evaluating FRA software in 2026 and beyond, the right test is to run a real assessment in the candidate tool end to end and check the output against BS 9792 directly. The methodology is the test, not the feature checklist.
Common questions
Three questions come up consistently in our conversations with assessors and compliance teams about the transition. The first is whether existing PAS 79 reports are still valid: yes, until their next periodic review, at which point the new assessment is conducted under BS 9792. The second is whether landlord clients will accept a BS 9792 report when their procurement documentation still says PAS 79: increasingly yes, and the assessor or consultancy is well-placed to brief the client on the standards change. The third is whether the transition requires retraining: no for the underlying methodology (which is largely recognisable), some for the software workflow (a day or two for an experienced assessor moving to BS 9792-shaped tooling).
For specific operational questions, see the FAQs below. For the full BS 9792 working reference, see the BS 9792 guide.
Audit and defensibility
The Fire Safety Order 2005 is the legal duty; the methodology used to discharge that duty is what BS 9792 now provides. Under enforcement, the question is not "did the assessor follow PAS 79 or BS 9792" so much as "did the assessor produce a suitable and sufficient assessment that a competent person could defend on the methodology of the day". For new assessments going forward, the methodology of the day is BS 9792. Producing a PAS 79-shaped report on a building assessed in 2026 onwards is increasingly hard to defend.
For an enforcing authority, an insurer pursuing a subrogated claim, or a tribunal evaluating a service charge dispute, the BS 9792-shaped report with a clean evidence trail is materially stronger than a PAS 79-era prose report with photos in a separate folder. The competent person sign-off block, the content hash on the issued document, the named competent reviewer, and the action plan close-out trail all contribute to a more defensible position than the legacy approach.
For the assessor, this matters reputationally as well as operationally. The teams who move early to BS 9792-shaped delivery are positioned as ahead of the curve when their clients' procurement processes catch up. The teams who delay risk being asked, in a difficult conversation with a landlord client, why they are still producing PAS 79-era work in late 2026.
Working pattern
Most teams transition over a single annual review cycle rather than as a single-day switch. From a chosen start date, all new FRAs and all annual reviews of existing buildings are conducted under BS 9792. Existing PAS 79 reports remain on file as historical records and continue to discharge the duty until the next periodic review on each building. Twelve months later, every active FRA in the portfolio is BS 9792-shaped without a retroactive rewrite project.
For consultancies, the start date is typically aligned with one of three triggers: the renewal date on a major landlord contract (so the BS 9792 transition becomes part of the conversation), a software change (where the new tool is BS 9792-shaped from the start), or a calendar quarter chosen for operational convenience. The transition itself is a programme-management exercise, not a methodology relearning exercise. For social housing teams, the trigger is often a regulatory readiness review (Regulator of Social Housing inspection, internal compliance audit) where the BS 9792 transition demonstrates active engagement with the current standard.
FAQ
No. PAS 79-2:2020 and PAS 79-1:2020 were both withdrawn by BSI when BS 9792:2025 came into force. New FRAs going forward should be conducted under BS 9792. Existing PAS 79 reports remain valid until their next periodic review, at which point the new assessment is conducted under the current standard.
The methodological backbone is broadly familiar to a PAS 79 reader. The differences are in explicit articulation of several elements PAS 79 left more implicit: evidence model, competence framework, output report shape, periodic review and significant change triggers. For an experienced assessor, the transition is more about discipline than re-learning. See the BS 9792 working guide for the full working detail.
Most housing landlords are aware of the standards transition, and a BS 9792 report is what serious clients will increasingly expect. Where a client's procurement documentation still references PAS 79, the assessor or consultancy is well-placed to brief them on the change, often using the new report as the practical demonstration. The Regulator of Social Housing has not formally mandated BS 9792, but the direction of regulation supports it.
No major retraining is required at the methodology level; the underlying discipline is broadly the same. Software-shaped retraining is typically a day or two per assessor when moving from a PAS 79-shaped tool to a BS 9792-shaped one. The bigger lift is updating templates and report generation rather than re-educating assessors.
Existing PAS 79 reports remain on file as historical records and remain valid until their next periodic review. They do not need to be retroactively redone. As the periodic review cycle turns through one full year, every active FRA in the portfolio moves to BS 9792-shaped naturally without a big-bang migration.
For HRB stock under the Building Safety Act 2022, the FRA is one of the documents the building safety case rests on. The audit grade expected is correspondingly higher. BS 9792:2025 supports this expectation by making the evidence model and competent-person sign-off explicit. For HRB programmes, the BS 9792 transition often coincides with wider safety-case-grade discipline tightening.
See the standards transition operationalised on a real building. Book a 30-minute walkthrough or start a free account.
