Do Landlords Have to Provide a Fire Risk Assessment?
If you let property, whether you hold a single buy to let or a growing portfolio of shared houses, one of the first questions worth answering is whether you are legally required to have a fire risk assessment in place. It is a question we are asked regularly by landlords and investors, and the honest answer is that it depends on the type of property you let, with the duty falling more heavily on shared and multi occupied buildings than on a straightforward single let. Getting this right matters, because the responsibility sits with you as the person in control of the building, and the consequences of getting it wrong are both legal and, far more importantly, a matter of your tenants' safety.
What a fire risk assessment is
A fire risk assessment is a structured review of a building that identifies the fire hazards, the people who could be at risk, and the measures needed to remove or reduce that risk to an acceptable level, recorded in a way that shows what has been found and what action is being taken. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, as amended by the Fire Safety Act 2021, requires one to be carried out for almost all non-domestic premises and for the communal parts of many residential buildings, and it is the central duty from which most of a landlord's other fire safety obligations follow.
Do landlords have to provide one?
Under the Fire Safety Order, a fire risk assessment is a legal requirement wherever you are responsible for a building that is not a single private dwelling. That single phrase does a lot of work, so it is worth unpacking.
A property let to one household as a self contained home is treated as a single private dwelling, and the Fire Safety Order does not require a fire risk assessment of the interior of that home. This does not leave you duty free, since you still have obligations under the Housing Act 2004, the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations, the Furniture and Furnishings Fire Safety Regulations and the various gas and electrical safety rules, but a full fire risk assessment of the dwelling itself is not the mechanism the law uses here.
Almost everything else does require an assessment. A property occupied by two or more households who share facilities such as a kitchen or bathroom, which is the broad shape of a house in multiple occupation, requires a fire risk assessment covering the premises and the shared circulation routes to and from the private rooms, including corridors and staircases. A block of flats requires an assessment of its communal areas, and following the Fire Safety Act 2021 that duty reaches up to and including the entrance doors of the individual flats. In practical terms, the moment a building is shared in any meaningful way, the duty to assess and record applies.
Recording is now required in every caseSince 1 October 2023, Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 has amended the Fire Safety Order so that the responsible person must record the fire risk assessment in full, regardless of the number of employees or whether any licence is in force. The older idea that a small landlord could rely on an unrecorded assessment no longer holds, and a written record is now the baseline for everyone.
Why this matters most for HMOs
For the independent investor, the HMO is where fire safety law bears down hardest, and for good reason. A house occupied by several unrelated tenants combines a higher number of people at risk, individual sleeping rooms, shared escape routes and, often, an older building that was never designed for the way it is now used, which is exactly the combination that makes fire both more likely and more dangerous. Larger HMOs are also subject to mandatory licensing, and the licence conditions set by the local authority will commonly specify the fire alarm grade and category, the fire doors, the emergency lighting and the escape arrangements expected, all of which a competent HMO fire risk assessment is designed to address.
This is the part of the market where a generic, tick box assessment most often falls short, because the risks in a shared house are specific to its layout and its occupancy, and the protection has to be designed around how people would actually escape from upper floor rooms at night. Treating the assessment as a genuine review of the building, rather than a document to file, is what turns it from a compliance cost into real protection for your tenants and your investment.
Your wider responsibilities as a landlord
The assessment sits at the centre of a broader set of duties, and the measures it identifies will usually draw on several of them. In general terms, a landlord is expected to provide working smoke alarms on each storey and carbon monoxide alarms in rooms with a fixed combustion appliance, with the detection in a shared house often designed as a mixture of the domestic and commercial parts of BS 5839. Escape routes must be kept clear and usable, supported by emergency lighting where needed, and tenants should understand what to do in an emergency through a simple evacuation plan. Passive protection such as fire doors needs to be in place and kept in good order through regular inspection by a competent person, and appropriate firefighting equipment, such as extinguishers and fire blankets, should be provided where the assessment calls for it.
None of this is a one off exercise. It is sensible to review your fire risk assessment at least once every twelve months, and to update it sooner whenever something about the building or its use changes, such as a conversion, a change of tenant profile or alterations to the layout, since the assessment is only as good as its currency.
An independent view, with nothing else to sellWe carry out fire risk assessments and advise on what your building needs, but we do not sell alarms, fire doors, extinguishers or servicing contracts. That means the recommendations in your assessment are driven solely by the risk and the law, giving you an impartial basis for deciding what to spend and where, rather than a quote dressed up as a survey.
If you are a landlord or investor and you are not certain whether your properties need a fire risk assessment, or whether the ones you hold are genuinely fit for purpose, the most reliable step is to have them assessed properly by a competent and independent assessor. As specialists in HMO and rented property fire safety covering the North West, North Wales and the West Midlands, we are glad to look at a single property or an entire portfolio and tell you clearly where you stand.
Fire risk assessments for landlords and investors
From a single shared house to a full portfolio, our ABBE Level 4 qualified assessors provide clear, recorded fire risk assessments built around how your buildings are actually occupied. If you would like to discuss your properties, please get in touch.
Get in touch HMO fire safetyThis article is provided for general guidance and does not constitute professional advice for any specific premises. It refers to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Building Safety Act 2022, the Housing Act 2004 and related residential fire safety regulations. Considerable care has been taken to ensure accuracy at the time of writing, but legislation and guidance change over time. Fletcher Risk Management Limited provides Fire Risk Assessments, Fire Door Inspections and Fire Safety Training across the North West, North Wales and the West Midlands.