The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005: The Thirteen Articles That Matter Most
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the single piece of legislation every responsible person in England and Wales needs to understand, and most have never read it. Here is what the thirteen articles that matter most actually require.
The Fire Safety Order came into force on 1 October 2006, replacing more than seventy separate pieces of fire safety legislation and doing away with the old fire certificate system. Almost every fire safety prosecution brought in England and Wales over the past two decades has been brought under it. Twenty years on, it remains the foundation of fire safety law outside the domestic home, yet the people on whom its duties fall, the landlords, managing agents, employers, and business owners the Order calls "responsible persons", often have at best a vague sense of what it says.
This article walks through the thirteen articles of the Order that carry the greatest practical weight. We have paraphrased throughout in plain English, quoting the legislation only where the exact wording matters. The aim is not to replace the full text, which is freely available on legislation.gov.uk, but to give responsible persons a working understanding of what the law actually asks of them.
Anyone with a degree of control over non-domestic premises, the common parts of multi-occupied residential buildings, or a workplace. That includes employers, building owners, managing agents, freeholders, landlords, occupiers, and the self-employed. If you are unsure whether the Order applies to you, it almost certainly does.
Part 1 — GeneralArticle 3: Meaning of "responsible person"
The Order hangs on a single defined term, and Article 3 is where that definition sits. The responsible person is, in a workplace, the employer if the workplace is under their control. In any other case it is the person who has control of the premises in connection with a trade, business, or other undertaking, or the owner where the person in control does not have such an undertaking.
"responsible person" means— (a) in relation to a workplace, the employer, if the workplace is to any extent under his control; (b) in relation to any premises not falling within paragraph (a)—(i) the person who has control of the premises (as occupier or otherwise) in connection with the carrying on by him of a trade, business or other undertaking (for profit or not); or (ii) the owner, where the person in control of the premises does not have control in connection with the carrying on by that person of a trade, business or other undertaking. Article 3, Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
The practical consequence is that a single building can have several responsible persons at once. In a parade of shops with flats above, each shopkeeper is a responsible person for their unit, the owner of the block is a responsible person for the common parts, and the employer of any cleaning contractor may also pick up duties in respect of their own staff. This multiplicity is the source of most of the confusion around the Order, and it is why the question of who is responsible for fire safety in multi-tenant buildings is so often contested.
Part 2 — Fire Safety DutiesArticle 8: Duty to take general fire precautions
Article 8 is the foundation stone of the whole Order. It imposes two general duties on the responsible person. The first is to take such general fire precautions as will ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety of any employees. The second, owed to everyone else who may be lawfully on the premises or in the immediate vicinity, is to take such general fire precautions as may reasonably be required in the circumstances to ensure that the premises are safe.
Two things are worth noting. First, the duty owed to employees is higher than the duty owed to anyone else, a legacy of the Order's origins in European workplace safety directives. Second, the phrase "so far as is reasonably practicable" is not a loophole but a legal test, one that weighs the cost, time, and effort of a precaution against the risk it addresses. The courts have been interpreting that phrase for a hundred years, and the burden of proving that a precaution was not reasonably practicable falls on the defendant under Article 34.
Part 2Article 9: Risk assessment
If Article 8 is the foundation, Article 9 is the load-bearing wall. It requires the responsible person to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed, for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions the responsible person needs to take. The assessment must be reviewed regularly, kept up to date, and revised whenever there is reason to suspect that it is no longer valid or when there has been a significant change in the matters to which it relates.
Where the responsible person employs five or more people, the significant findings of the assessment must be recorded in writing, along with any group of persons identified as being especially at risk. In practice, the written record is the single document most often requested by a fire and rescue authority during an audit, and the absence of a suitable and sufficient assessment is the most commonly cited breach in fire safety prosecutions. The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed that in multi-occupied residential buildings the assessment must cover the structure, external walls, and flat entrance doors, which for many managing agents has meant commissioning external wall surveys for the first time.
"Suitable and sufficient" is the test every fire risk assessment has to pass. A generic checklist produced by someone with no competence in fire safety is neither. The assessment must be tailored to the building, to the people in it, and to the way it is used, and the person carrying it out must be competent to do so. Article 18 deals with what competence means.
Part 2Article 11: Fire safety arrangements
Article 11 requires the responsible person to make and give effect to appropriate arrangements, having regard to the size of the undertaking and the nature of its activities, for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring, and review of the preventive and protective measures identified by the risk assessment. Where five or more people are employed, those arrangements must be recorded.
This is the article that turns a risk assessment from a document into a management system. A risk assessment that identifies, say, the need for weekly fire alarm tests but does not sit within a framework that actually schedules those tests, assigns them to a named person, and reviews whether they have been carried out, is not giving effect to anything. Enforcement notices under the Order frequently cite Article 11 alongside Article 9, on the basis that the assessment itself is in order but nothing has been done with it.
Part 2Article 13: Fire-fighting and fire detection
Article 13 requires the responsible person to ensure that, where necessary, the premises are equipped with appropriate fire-fighting equipment and with fire detectors and alarms, and that any non-automatic fire-fighting equipment is easily accessible, simple to use, and indicated by signs. The article also requires that measures be taken for firefighting in the premises, that persons be nominated to implement those measures, and that arrangements be made for contacting the emergency services.
What counts as "appropriate" depends on the risk assessment and on the technical standards that sit alongside the Order, most notably BS 5839 for fire detection and alarm systems and BS 5306 for portable fire extinguishers. The Order itself is deliberately non-prescriptive on equipment, which gives responsible persons flexibility but also leaves them with the burden of justifying their choices. A small office with a handful of employees may need no more than a Grade D1 domestic-style detection system and a couple of extinguishers; a hotel or care home will need a full L1 category fire alarm and a considered extinguisher provision throughout. Getting this judgement wrong is one of the commonest routes into enforcement.
Part 2Article 14: Emergency routes and exits
Article 14 sets out the requirements for the means of escape. Where necessary, emergency routes and exits must be kept clear at all times, must lead as directly as possible to a place of safety, and must be adequate in number, dimension, and distribution for the persons likely to use them. Emergency doors must open in the direction of escape and must not be locked or fastened in a way that cannot be easily and immediately opened from within. Routes and exits must be indicated by signs, and those that require illumination must be provided with emergency lighting in the event of a failure of normal lighting.
Obstructed escape routes remain the most visible fire safety breach and the one most likely to prompt a prohibition notice. Locked fire exits, particularly in retail and hospitality premises, are the single most common route to a criminal conviction under the Order, because the breach is so straightforward to prove and so obviously dangerous to the public.
Part 2Article 15: Procedures for serious and imminent danger and for danger areas
Article 15 requires the responsible person to establish and, where necessary, give effect to appropriate procedures, including safety drills, to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger to relevant persons. The article also requires the nomination of a sufficient number of competent persons to implement those procedures, and restrictions on access to any area on grounds of safety unless the person concerned has received adequate safety instruction.
This is the article that underpins the fire evacuation plan. For simple premises with a general needs population, that plan may amount to little more than "on hearing the alarm, leave by the nearest available exit and assemble at the muster point." For residential blocks, care homes, and hospitals, the plan is often considerably more complex, involving stay-put or phased evacuation strategies and personal emergency evacuation plans for residents who cannot self-evacuate. Article 15 does not prescribe which strategy to adopt, only that an appropriate strategy must exist and be implemented.
Part 2Article 17: Maintenance
Article 17 requires that the premises and any facilities, equipment, and devices provided under the Order, or under any other enactment including any enactment repealed or revoked by the Order, are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order, and in good repair. In multi-occupied residential buildings, this duty extends to facilities provided for the use of firefighters, such as dry risers, firefighting lifts, and evacuation alert systems.
The list of items that fall within Article 17 is long. It includes fire alarm systems, emergency lighting, fire extinguishers, sprinklers, smoke control systems, fire doors, compartmentation, dry and wet risers, fire hydrants, signage, and any other measure relied on by the risk assessment. Each has its own testing and servicing regime under British Standards or manufacturer guidance, and each carries records that a fire and rescue authority will expect to see during an audit. Our guide to how often fire alarms and emergency lighting should be tested covers the weekly, monthly, and annual requirements in more detail. Missing or incomplete maintenance records are, along with absent risk assessments, the most common paperwork failure identified in enforcement.
Part 2Article 18: Safety assistance
Article 18 requires the responsible person to appoint one or more competent persons to assist in undertaking the preventive and protective measures. A person is regarded as competent where they have sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to properly assist in undertaking those measures.
In practice, this is the article that governs the appointment of a fire risk assessor. The Order does not require the assessor to hold any particular qualification, but it does require them to be demonstrably competent, a distinction that matters because when things go wrong the responsible person, not the assessor, is the one in the dock. A Home Office call for evidence found that a significant proportion of fire risk assessors were not registered with any accredited body, which responsible persons should bear in mind when appointing one. Membership of a scheme such as the Institution of Fire Engineers' Register of Fire Risk Assessors, or certification under a UKAS-accredited scheme such as BAFE SP205, provides evidence of competence that a responsible person can rely on.
Part 2Article 21: Training
Article 21 requires the responsible person to ensure that employees are provided with adequate safety training at the time they are first employed, on being exposed to new or increased risks, and that training is repeated periodically where appropriate. The training must take place during working hours and must be appropriate to the risks identified by the risk assessment.
Training is one of the most commonly breached requirements of the Order, partly because the standard is qualitative, "adequate", rather than quantitative. The responses to the government's call for evidence on the Order suggested that online training alone is often not sufficient, and that some form of situational exercise, typically an evacuation drill tailored to the premises, is expected alongside classroom or online learning. For premises with a fire warden system, the wardens themselves require more extensive training than general staff, and that training needs to be refreshed at least annually.
Part 2Article 22: Co-operation and co-ordination between responsible persons
Where two or more responsible persons share, or have duties in respect of, premises, Article 22 requires each of them to co-operate with the other so far as is necessary to enable them to comply with the requirements of the Order, to coordinate the measures they take, and to take all reasonable steps to inform the other of the risks to relevant persons arising out of or in connection with the conduct of their respective undertakings.
This is the article that does the heavy lifting in mixed-use and multi-occupied buildings, where the freeholder, the managing agent, the commercial tenants, and the residential leaseholders all have overlapping duties. It is also the article under which information most commonly fails to flow. A risk assessment for the common parts of a residential block is of limited use if the commercial tenant on the ground floor has stored combustibles in a shared bin store and has not told the managing agent; the duty to share such information runs in both directions. Subsequent amendments, including the insertion of Article 22B on co-operation with accountable persons under the Building Safety Act 2022, have extended these obligations further in higher-risk residential buildings.
Part 4 — Offences and AppealsArticle 32: Offences
Article 32 is the article that turns the rest of the Order from guidance into law. It makes it an offence for any responsible person or any other person subject to duties under Articles 8 to 22 to fail to comply with those duties where the failure places one or more relevant persons at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire. It also creates offences for failing to comply with enforcement or prohibition notices, for obstructing inspectors, and for making false statements.
Offences under Article 32 are triable either way. On conviction on indictment, the penalty is an unlimited fine, and since the introduction of the Sentencing Council's definitive guideline on health and safety offences in 2016, fines imposed under the Order have risen sharply, particularly where large organisations are convicted. Custodial sentences are available for certain offences, including failure to comply with a prohibition notice, and in rare cases involving fatalities have been imposed. The effect is that a breach of, for instance, the Article 9 risk assessment duty is not merely a regulatory matter but a potential criminal offence, and this is why the Order demands to be taken seriously.
Article 33 provides a defence where the accused can prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence. It is a narrow defence, and the burden of proof rests on the defendant. Relying on it is a last resort; the better course is to comply in the first place.
Part 5 — MiscellaneousArticle 38: Maintenance of measures provided for protection of fire-fighters
Article 38 imposes a specific duty on every person who has, to any extent, control of premises to which the Order applies to ensure that any facilities, equipment, and devices provided in respect of the premises under certain other enactments, or under the building regulations, for the use by or protection of firefighters, are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order, and in good repair.
In practice, this covers items such as firefighting lifts, dry and wet risers, smoke ventilation systems, firefighters' switches for luminous tube signs, and premises information boxes. These are installations that exist not for the ordinary occupants of the building but for the fire and rescue service when it arrives, and the duty to keep them in working order sits alongside, but separately from, the general maintenance duty in Article 17. In older high-rise residential buildings in particular, the condition of dry risers has been a recurring issue, and Article 38 is the article that bites on it.
How the Order has evolved since 2005
The Order that came into force in October 2006 is not quite the Order that exists today. Three pieces of subsequent legislation have changed its scope and its demands in significant ways.
The Fire Safety Act 2021, passed in response to the Grenfell Tower fire, clarified that in buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises the Order applies to the building's structure, external walls, and all doors between domestic premises and common parts. The intent was to put beyond doubt that cladding systems, compartmentation, and flat entrance doors fall within the responsible person's risk assessment duty.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, which came into force in January 2023, sit alongside the Order rather than amending it, and impose specific duties on responsible persons in multi-occupied residential buildings. Those duties vary by building height, with the most demanding obligations, including the provision of electronic floor plans and premises information boxes to the fire and rescue service, applying to buildings above 18 metres in height.
The Building Safety Act 2022 inserted new articles into the Order itself, most significantly Article 22A on the provision of information to an incoming responsible person, and Article 22B on co-operation with accountable persons under the new building safety regime for higher-risk buildings. These changes reflect a broader legislative push toward continuity of information across the life of a building, from design and construction through occupation and handover.
The direction of travel is clear. Since Grenfell, the duties of responsible persons in residential buildings have grown more detailed, more documented, and more enforceable, and there is little sign that this direction will reverse.
Not sure where you stand under the Order?
We are a fire safety consultancy based in Chester, working with responsible persons across Cheshire, the Wirral, the North West, and North Wales. If you would like a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, a fire door inspection, or fire safety training tailored to your premises, please get in touch.
Get in touch Fire risk assessmentsThis article is a general guide to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and is not legal advice. Responsible persons should consult the full text of the Order on legislation.gov.uk and seek professional advice on their specific circumstances.