"How often do I need to review my fire risk assessment?" is one of the questions we get asked most frequently. People want a simple answer — annually, every two years, every five years. Something they can put in the diary and forget about.
The actual answer is more nuanced than that, and it catches a lot of people out.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to keep the fire risk assessment "under review." It doesn't specify a fixed interval. There's no legally mandated expiry date on a fire risk assessment.
Instead, the Order requires a review when there's reason to suspect the assessment is no longer valid, or when there has been a significant change in the matters to which it relates. In practical terms, this means your fire risk assessment needs reviewing whenever something changes that could affect fire safety.
Certain triggers make a review mandatory. If you've carried out building works — even relatively minor ones like new partitions, changed doors, or altered layouts — the assessment needs updating. Changes to the building's use, such as converting an office to a warehouse, or adding a kitchen where there wasn't one before, require review. Significant changes to the number or type of occupants trigger a review — a building that now has vulnerable residents where there were none before, or a shift from daytime-only to 24-hour occupation.
New hazards also demand attention. Installing new electrical equipment, changing heating systems, introducing flammable materials or changing processes that generate heat all affect the fire risk profile. A fire or near-miss incident should always prompt a review, even if damage was minor. And changes to fire safety systems — new alarm panels, altered detection zones, replaced doors — should be reflected in the assessment.
While there's no legal requirement for an annual review, it's widely regarded as best practice. Most fire safety professionals recommend a formal review at least once a year, even if nothing has obviously changed. The reason is simple: things change gradually, and without a regular check-in, small changes accumulate into significant gaps.
The fire extinguisher that got moved during the Christmas party and never went back. The fire door that now catches on new carpet tiles. The storage room that's gradually filled up and is now blocking access to an escape route. The new employee who never received fire safety induction training because "someone else was supposed to do it."
An annual review catches these drift-related issues before they become significant problems.
A review doesn't necessarily mean starting from scratch. If the original assessment was thorough and well-documented, a review involves checking whether the findings are still valid, whether the action plan items have been completed, whether any new hazards have been introduced, and whether the existing fire safety measures are still adequate.
If the building, its use and its occupancy haven't changed significantly, a review can be relatively quick. If there have been major changes, a full reassessment may be more appropriate.
The output should be documented — either as an updated version of the original assessment or as a formal review record that sits alongside it. The key is evidence: evidence that you've reviewed the assessment, evidence of what you found, and evidence of any actions taken as a result.
The biggest risk isn't choosing the wrong review interval — it's not reviewing at all. Too many businesses commission a fire risk assessment, file it, and never look at it again until someone asks for it. By that point, the assessment may be years out of date, the building may have changed significantly, and the assessment is effectively useless as a compliance document.
A fire risk assessment is a living document. It should reflect the current state of your premises, not the state they were in three years ago when the assessment was done.
For most businesses, an annual formal review supplemented by ongoing awareness is the right approach. The annual review is a structured check carried out by a competent person. The ongoing awareness means that anyone responsible for fire safety in the building flags changes as they happen — new equipment, building works, changes in occupancy — so the assessment can be updated in real time rather than waiting for the annual cycle.
If your business operates in a high-risk environment, or if the building and its use change frequently, more frequent reviews may be appropriate. If the building and operations are very stable, the annual review might find nothing significant — but the act of reviewing confirms that the assessment remains valid and provides evidence of ongoing compliance.
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York Green Safety Partners provides fire risk assessments and reviews for all types of premises across the UK. Based in Cheshire, covering the whole country.