What a Good Fire Risk Assessment Actually Looks Like

4 Dec

What a Good Fire Risk Assessment Actually Looks Like | Fletcher Risk Management

Fire Risk Assessment · Guidance for Responsible Persons

Most responsible persons commission a fire risk assessment because the law requires one. Far fewer know enough to judge whether what they receive is actually good. This matters — not because a poor assessment is a regulatory inconvenience, but because a poor assessment creates a false picture of compliance in a building that may have serious unresolved risks. Knowing what good looks like is part of fulfilling the duty, not a bonus.

4 December 2025, Updated May 2026

We review a significant number of existing fire risk assessments in the course of our work across Chester, Liverpool, Manchester, and the wider North West — sometimes as part of a portfolio takeover by a new managing agent, sometimes when a responsible person has been told by the fire authority that their existing assessment is inadequate, and sometimes simply when a client wants a second opinion on a report they have received and are unsure about. The quality varies more than most people outside the industry realise.

At one end are assessments that are genuinely useful — building-specific, methodologically sound, honestly reported, and practically actionable. At the other end are template documents with the address changed on the cover page, risk ratings that appear to have been assigned without inspection, and action plans so vague that no contractor could use them to do anything. Both end up in a drawer and get filed as "fire risk assessment: completed." Only one of them actually protects the building or the responsible person.

This article explains what distinguishes a good fire risk assessment from a poor one, what every section of the report should contain, how to read the findings critically, and what sector-specific differences to look for. It is written for the responsible person who has received an assessment and wants to evaluate it, or who is about to commission one and wants to know what to ask for.

The immediate signals: good and bad

Before reading a single page of content, the structure and format of a fire risk assessment give you signals about the quality of what follows. These are not infallible — a beautifully formatted template can still contain poor assessment — but they are worth noticing.

Good sign
The report names specific rooms, areas, and features of your building. A good assessor writes about your building, not buildings in general. If the report mentions the basement plant room, the external staircase on the north elevation, or the kitchen extraction system over the fryer, you know the assessor walked those spaces and looked at them. Generic references to "the kitchen area" or "escape routes generally" are the beginning of a warning.
Bad sign
The report could apply to any building of a similar type. Template assessments can be spotted by the absence of specificity. If you removed the address from the cover page and the body of the report still made complete sense as a description of a generic premises, the assessor has not carried out a building-specific assessment. They have completed a form.
Good sign
Findings are prioritised with clear reasoning for each priority level. A good report tells you not just that something is a problem but why it has been classified as high, medium, or low priority. The reasoning connects the finding to the specific risk it creates — not a generic statement that "fire doors must be maintained."
Bad sign
Everything is the same priority, or priorities are assigned without explanation. Both patterns suggest the priority ratings have not been thought through. If forty findings are all rated "medium," either the building is extraordinarily uniform in its risk profile — unlikely — or the assessor applied a default rating rather than an individual judgment to each finding.
Good sign
The report is honest about what is adequate as well as what is not. A balanced assessment identifies both the risks and the things that are being managed well. A building that has well-maintained fire doors, a properly tested alarm, good escape signage, and a trained staff team deserves to have those things recorded. An assessment that only lists deficiencies without acknowledging adequacy is either incomplete or skewed toward generating remedial work.
Bad sign
The report is very short, or very long but empty. A thorough assessment of a small simple premises might be twelve to twenty pages. A thorough assessment of a large complex premises might be sixty. A four-page document for a thirty-flat residential block, or an eighty-page document for a small café that contains sixty pages of legislative text and twenty photographs of signage, are both wrong for different reasons.
Good sign
Photographs are present, specific, and referenced to findings. Photographs should illustrate findings — a propped-open fire door, a damaged intumescent seal, an obstructed escape route. Photographs of generic building features with no reference to a specific finding add nothing. The absence of any photographs from a building where deficiencies have been identified is unusual.

What every section of the report should contain

A fire risk assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 must address a defined set of elements. The structure may vary between providers, but the substance should be consistent. Here is what each section should contain, and what its absence or inadequacy signals.

Building description and methodology

A description of the building as assessed — construction type, floor area, occupancy, number of floors, current use — and a statement of the methodology the assessor has used. This section establishes the baseline. If it is absent or generic, the rest of the report has no foundation to stand on.

Identification of fire hazards

Sources of ignition, sources of fuel, and sources of oxygen throughout the premises. This should be specific — naming the electrical distribution board in the basement, the commercial fryer, the storeroom with accumulated packaging — not a generic list of categories. If a hazard is present in your building and not named, either the assessor missed it or did not look.

Identification of people at risk

All people who may be at risk — staff, residents, contractors, visitors, and specifically those who may need assistance to evacuate. This section should address the actual occupancy patterns of the building, including night-time staffing in sleeping risk premises, shift patterns in industrial premises, and the presence of members of the public in commercial premises. A one-line statement that "employees are at risk" is not adequate.

Evaluation of existing precautions

Assessment of the measures currently in place — fire detection and alarm, means of escape, emergency lighting, fire doors and compartmentation, firefighting equipment, and signage. Each element should be assessed against the standard appropriate to the building type and occupancy. Findings should be specific, referencing the location and condition of individual elements.

Evaluation of management arrangements

Review of the responsible person's fire safety management — the evacuation plan, staff training records, maintenance schedules for fire safety systems, records of fire drills, and the fire safety policy. This section matters because good physical precautions can be undermined by poor management, and poor physical precautions can be partially compensated by strong management. Both dimensions need to be assessed.

Overall risk rating

A summary judgment on the overall risk level — typically expressed as tolerable, moderate, substantial, or intolerable — with a clear explanation of the basis for that rating. The overall rating should follow logically from the findings. A building with multiple high-priority deficiencies rated as "tolerable" overall, or a building with minor issues rated "substantial," both suggest the rating has not been derived from the findings.

Prioritised action plan

Specific actions required, each with a priority level, a timescale, and enough detail that a contractor or facilities manager can act on it without further interpretation. Actions grouped as "immediate" (days), "short-term" (weeks), and "medium-term" (months). The action plan is the primary working document produced by the assessment — if it is vague, the assessment has failed at its most important output.

Review date and triggers

When the assessment should next be formally reviewed, and what circumstances would require an earlier review — material changes to the building, changes in use or occupancy, a significant incident, or a change in the responsible person. See our article on how often a fire risk assessment should be reviewed for the full picture on review obligations.

What a good and a poor assessment look like side by side

The difference between a good and a poor assessment is often clearest when you compare the treatment of the same finding. Here is what that difference looks like across a few common examples.

What a poor assessment says

Fire doors should be maintained in good working order and checked regularly.
Escape routes must be kept clear at all times.
Staff should receive adequate fire safety training.
The fire alarm system should be tested and maintained in accordance with BS 5839.
A suitable emergency evacuation plan should be in place and communicated to all staff.

What a good assessment says

The FD30 door to the ground floor plant room has a failed intumescent seal on the hinge side and does not latch correctly against the frame. Priority: immediate. Action: replace seal and adjust frame to restore latching.
The rear escape corridor (ground floor) had a pallet of stock blocking approximately 60% of the route width at the time of inspection. Priority: immediate. Action: remove and ensure storage policy prevents recurrence.
No fire safety training records were available for staff employed within the last twelve months — three of the four staff present had not received training. Priority: high. Action: schedule on-site training within 28 days.
The weekly alarm test log has a 6-week gap between January and February 2026. The panel showed a fault on zone 3 (first floor east). Priority: high. Action: obtain engineer's report within 14 days.
The evacuation plan on display does not reflect the current floor layout following the 2024 refurbishment. Priority: medium. Action: update and re-brief all staff within 60 days.

The difference is not length — it is specificity, location, and actionability. Every finding in a good assessment answers three questions: where exactly, what exactly, and what needs to happen. A finding that does not answer all three is not a finding — it is a generic observation.

What good looks like by sector

Fire risk assessments need to reflect the specific risk profile of the building type. An assessor who produces excellent assessments for offices may not have the knowledge to produce an adequate assessment for a care home, a hotel, or a high-rise residential block. These are the sector-specific elements that a good assessment for each building type should address.

HMOs

Grade of fire alarm system for number of storeys. Means of escape from all habitable rooms. Landlord's management obligations. Interlinked detector coverage throughout.

Residential blocks

Stay-put vs simultaneous evacuation strategy. Flat entrance door condition. Common area fire door inspection. BSA 2022 documentation obligations.

Hotels & guest houses

Sleeping risk and night-time staffing levels. Detection in all bedrooms and corridors. Staff training for night-shift evacuation. Emergency lighting on all escape routes.

Care homes

PEEP provision for every resident. Staff training for assisted evacuation. Zoned evacuation plan. Progressive horizontal evacuation strategy. CQC documentation alignment.

Schools & colleges

Assembly point capacity and management. Staff role assignments during evacuation. Visitor and contractor management. Out-of-hours use arrangements.

Warehouses & industrial

High rack storage fire spread modelling. Flammable substance storage compliance. Hot works permit system. Contractor induction arrangements. Sprinkler system adequacy for rack heights.

Churches & heritage

Construction type and concealed void assessment. Detection appropriate to ceiling height and geometry. Listed building constraint impact on remedial options. Volunteer and congregation management.

Offices & commercial

Occupancy density against escape capacity. Server room and electrical room provision. Shared escape routes with adjacent tenants. Out-of-hours working arrangements.

On assessor competence: The FSO requires the assessment to be carried out by a "competent person" — a term the legislation does not fully define but which the courts, the fire authority, and your insurer will interpret by reference to the assessor's qualifications and relevant sector experience. An assessor holding the ABBE Level 4 Diploma in Fire Risk Assessment, with demonstrable experience of your specific building type, is the standard against which competence will be measured in an enforcement or legal context. Both Tim and Sam Fletcher hold the ABBE Level 4 Diploma. For more on what to ask when commissioning an assessment, see our article on how to commission a fire risk assessment that actually protects you.

What to do if your existing assessment is inadequate

If you have read this article and concluded that your existing fire risk assessment does not meet the standard described, you have a few options depending on how significant the gap is.

If the assessment is recent, was carried out by a qualified assessor, but has some deficiencies in reporting or specificity, it is worth going back to the assessor with specific questions — asking them to clarify the basis for a priority rating, to name a specific location for a generic finding, or to confirm whether a particular area was inspected. A competent assessor who has done the work will be able to answer these questions. One who cannot may not have carried out the inspection they implied.

If the assessment is significantly out of date — more than twelve months old, or not updated following a material change to the building or its use — it needs to be reviewed regardless of its quality at the time it was produced. An assessment that was accurate when written may be dangerously misleading about a building that has since been refurbished, re-tenanted, or structurally modified.

If the assessment is clearly template-generated, contains no building-specific content, or was produced by an assessor whose qualifications you cannot establish, the appropriate course is a new assessment by a qualified assessor. The responsible person cannot rely on an inadequate assessment as a defence under the FSO — the duty is to ensure the assessment is adequate, not merely to have paid for one.

What the fire authority expects to see: When a fire authority inspector visits your premises, they will ask to see the fire risk assessment. They are looking for evidence that it is current, that it has been carried out by a competent person, that the findings are specific to the building, and that the action plan has been acted upon. An assessment that fails on any of these counts — regardless of how recently it was commissioned or how much it cost — is not a defence against enforcement action. An inspector who finds the assessment inadequate will issue an enforcement notice, and the cost of compliance under enforcement is invariably higher than the cost of a proper assessment commissioned proactively.

Fire risk assessments across the North West and North Wales

We carry out fire risk assessments to the standard described in this article for premises of all types across the region. Every assessment is building-specific, carried out on-site by an ABBE Level 4 qualified assessor, and reported in a format that is usable by the responsible person, their contractors, their insurer, and the fire authority. We do not produce templates.

Chester

Liverpool

Manchester

Wirral

Warrington

Salford

Crewe

Northwich

Wrexham

Shrewsbury

Stoke-on-Trent

Llandudno

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This article provides general guidance on the characteristics of a high-quality fire risk assessment and does not constitute legal advice. Responsible persons should ensure their assessment is carried out by a competent person appropriate to the specific building type and occupancy. Fletcher Risk Management Ltd is based in Chester and provides fire risk assessments across the North West, North Wales, and Shropshire from £295.

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Tim Fletcher