Does My Airbnb Need Fire Extinguishers?
One of the questions we are asked most often by holiday-let owners, whether they run a single Airbnb flat in the city or a handful of cottages on the coast, is whether the property needs fire extinguishers. It is a reasonable thing to wonder, and the honest answer is that for a typical self-catering let the law does not require them, which tends to surprise owners who assume that taking paying guests means fitting commercial-grade firefighting equipment on every wall. The requirement that does apply, and that matters a good deal more, is the fire risk assessment, and once that is understood the extinguisher question largely answers itself.
The clearest source on all of this is the Home Office guide Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire, which is written for exactly this kind of property and which we have used as the basis for everything that follows.
Does fire safety law apply to a holiday let at all?
It does, and there is no exemption for small properties or for those let only part of the year. The moment you take payment for someone to sleep in your property, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies, and you become what the legislation calls the responsible person, with a duty to keep guests safe from fire. The Home Office guide is aimed at what it terms small paying guest accommodation, broadly a single premises of ground floor, or ground and first floor, that sleeps no more than ten people with no more than four bedrooms on the first floor, together with individual flats whether in a purpose-built block or a converted house, so the great majority of Airbnb and holiday-let owners will find their property sits within its scope.
So do you need a fire extinguisher?
For a self-catering let, the guide treats firefighting equipment as a matter of choice rather than obligation. Its starting point is that, in the event of a fire, the safest thing to do is to get out, and that guests should not be expected to use firefighting equipment at all, since they are asleep in an unfamiliar building and their priority is to escape. On that basis the guide says that although guests are not expected to use it, you may wish to provide a small fire extinguisher or a fire blanket in the kitchen area, and the wording is deliberate, because the guide uses a strict convention throughout in which "must" means a legal requirement, "should" means a recommendation, and "may" means something you are permitted to do but are not obliged to. Extinguishers, for a self-catering property, sit firmly in that last category.
The worked examples at the back of the guide bear this out. For a two-bedroom flat, a two-storey house and a two-storey cottage, the kitchen extinguisher and fire blanket are each listed as optional, and the only example in which they appear without that label is the open-plan studio flat, where the cooking and sleeping areas share a single space and a small multi-purpose extinguisher, of a type that is not dry powder, is shown alongside the fire blanket in the kitchen. For most owners, then, the question is not whether the law forces an extinguisher upon them, but whether they judge it a sensible addition.
When firefighting equipment does become expected
The position changes once staff are involved. Where you have staff on the premises, or staff who visit regularly such as cleaners and changeover teams, the guide moves from "may" to "should", recommending that firefighting equipment is provided and that those staff are trained to use it, while making clear that they should be told evacuation is always preferable and that they should never attempt to tackle anything more than a very small fire. This is the distinction that catches owners out, because a hands-off Airbnb that guests let themselves into and a staffed guest house with a cleaning team passing through several times a week are treated quite differently, and if you fall into the second category then both the equipment and the staff training that goes with it become part of what is expected of you.
- Self-catering let, no staff: extinguishers are optional, and a fire blanket in the kitchen is the most useful single item to provide.
- Staff on site or visiting regularly: firefighting equipment should be provided and staff trained, on the understanding that escape comes first.
- If you do provide an extinguisher, use a multi-purpose type rather than dry powder indoors, and have it serviced annually by a competent contractor.
- None of this replaces the one genuine legal requirement, which is a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment.
What the law actually requires
The Fire Safety Order does not hand you a shopping list of measures, and the guide is explicit that it is the fire risk assessment which determines the level of protection a particular property needs, including whether fire extinguishers are required, with the general principle that a higher-risk layout calls for more measures and a lower-risk one for fewer. Your assessment has to be suitable and sufficient for the size and layout of the accommodation, it has to be recorded, and it has to be reviewed regularly and whenever something about the property changes, which for a holiday let means at least an annual review given the constant turnover of guests who have never seen the building before.
In practice the assessment will spend far less time on extinguishers than on the things that genuinely save lives in a property where the occupants are asleep. Detection comes first, which for most small lets means interlinked, mains-powered smoke and heat alarms positioned so that a fire starting anywhere wakes everyone throughout the building, with heat alarms used in kitchens where smoke alarms would only invite false alarms and removed batteries. Beyond detection, the assessment looks at whether escape routes are kept clear and can be used without a key, which matters enormously where smart locks and key safes are in use, at whether any bedroom can only be reached by passing through another room, at whether fire doors are needed to protect the route to the final exit, and at the fire safety information you give guests, since a clear notice telling them how to get out and where to assemble is worth a great deal more than a row of extinguishers they have never been shown how to use.
What we would fit in a typical small let
Putting the guidance together, our steer for a straightforward self-catering property is to spend your attention and your budget where the risk is, which means getting the detection right, keeping the escape route clear and openable, and giving guests simple written instructions, and then to add a fire blanket in the kitchen because it is genuinely useful for the most common cause of fire in this kind of property, which is cooking. A single multi-purpose extinguisher near the kitchen is a reasonable addition if you would like one, kept away from dry powder for indoor use and serviced once a year, but it is the least important part of the picture and certainly not the thing that makes a property compliant. The extinguisher is the cheap and visible part, and the assessment is the part that actually keeps people safe and keeps you on the right side of the law.
Holiday lets are a significant part of the local economy in places such as the North Wales coast and Gwynedd, as well as across rural Cheshire and Shropshire, and we carry out fire risk assessments for owners and managing agents of short-term and serviced accommodation throughout our coverage area, including the landlords who run holiday lets alongside more conventional rental property and need both sets of duties handled together.
Getting it assessed properly
If you have never had a fire risk assessment carried out on your holiday let, or if the one you have predates the property's current layout and bookings, that is the place to start, because it is both the legal requirement and the document your insurer and booking platform are most likely to ask for. The assessment will tell you, on the evidence of your particular property rather than a generic checklist, exactly what detection, escape provision and equipment you need, and whether an extinguisher earns its place at all, which is a far more useful answer than a blanket yes or no.
Fire risk assessments for holiday lets and short-term accommodation
Fletcher Risk carries out fire risk assessments for Airbnb owners, holiday-let landlords and managing agents across the North West, North Wales and the West Midlands. We will assess your property against the current guidance and tell you plainly what it needs, with no upselling of equipment that does not earn its place. If we can help, please get in touch.
We cover Cheshire West, Cheshire East, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Flintshire & Wrexham, the North Wales Coast, Gwynedd, Shropshire and Staffordshire.
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