BS 9792:2025, the UK housing fire risk assessment standard.

BS 9792:2025 is housing-specific. It applies to the common parts of purpose-built blocks of flats, converted buildings containing residential premises, houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), sheltered and supported housing, and other residential settings where a duty to assess fire risk exists. It deliberately leaves the inside of individual private dwellings out of scope unless the dutyholder has reason to enter.

For non-housing buildings, offices, retail, industrial, education, healthcare, hospitality, the relevant code is BS 9792-1 (general buildings, the rebrand of PAS 79-1:2020). The two parts share a methodology but the scope, terminology and worked examples are different. Trying to use the housing standard for a hotel, or the general standard for a block of flats, will produce a report that fails competent review.

The standard sits alongside other technical references. Approved Document B for design, BS 9991 for residential fire safety design, BS 5839-6 for domestic fire detection, but it is the methodology document. It tells you how to carry out an assessment that meets the FSO duty, not what the building should have been built to.

BS 9792:2025 keeps the broad methodology that PAS 79 readers will recognise, identify hazards, identify people at risk, evaluate the risk, record significant findings, plan an action plan, and review periodically. The shape of the report follows the methodology: building description, fire safety arrangements, observations against each section of the building, significant findings, recommended actions, and a competence-and-sign-off block.

The assessor is doing more than describing the building. At each stage they are exercising judgement against the methodology, deciding which hazards are significant in this specific setting, which residents are at heightened risk, and what residual risk remains after the existing fire safety arrangements are taken into account. The competent reviewer is checking that judgement, not the facts of the building alone.

Under PAS 79-era practice, the connection between an observation on site and a finding in the report was often implicit. The assessor saw something, formed a view, and wrote it up, and the evidence trail might be a folder of photos somewhere with filenames that nobody remembered six months later.

BS 9792:2025 expects more. Every significant finding should be traceable to the observation, location, and evidence that justifies it. In practice that means each high-priority issue in the report should answer three questions on demand: where was this seen, what did the assessor see, and what evidence (photo, drawing, document, third-party reference) supports the rating that has been given.

For competent reviewers this is the difference between a quick procedural check and a meaningful technical review. For software it is the design constraint: a report writer that lets you produce narrative findings without keeping the underlying observation and evidence linked is a tool that fails the standard’s implicit data model. FRA Flow is built around this, observations, photos and locations are first-class records, and findings carry their evidence with them through the workflow into the issued report.

For higher-risk residential buildings (HRBs), broadly, residential buildings of 18 metres or seven storeys and above, with at least two residential units, the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) and its secondary legislation add a layer of duties that BS 9792 alone does not carry. The Principal Accountable Person (PAP) named under the BSA is responsible for the building safety case for the building, of which the FRA is one component, and is registered with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) within the Health and Safety Executive.

In practice this means an FRA on an HRB has to do two jobs at once. It is the FSO-compliant fire risk assessment for the common parts, the BS 9792 work, and it is one of the safety-case-feeding documents the PAP can be asked to produce on inspection. The methodology does not change. The audit expectations rise. Findings need to be auditable. Action plans need to land in the building safety case management process. The reviewer signature is not optional.

For non-HRB residential buildings, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 also create operational duties on the Responsible Person, fire door inspections, evacuation information for residents, secure on-site information for fire and rescue services. These are not part of the FRA itself, but a serious assessment will reference them in the fire safety arrangements section and flag where the dutyholder is not yet meeting them.

FRA Flow is housing-focused fire risk assessment software designed around the BS 9792:2025 methodology from the data model up. Sections in the workbench mirror the assessment structure. Observations, photos and locations are first-class records that carry through into the report. Significant findings inherit their evidence. The reviewer queue separates work waiting for sign-off from work the assessor still has open. Sign-off is a two-signature event with a content hash, a timestamp and an audit trail.

AI-drafted narrative is offered as an option, not the default, and where used, every drafted line links back to the observation, photo or risk evaluation it came from, so the competent reviewer reads the source in one click. The output is a BS 9792-shaped report a competent reviewer can sign with confidence and a landlord client can hand to an enforcing authority without rework.