A fire breaks out. Someone dies. What follows is not primarily an insurance matter, a civil claim, or an administrative process. What follows is a criminal investigation — and it begins immediately, before the building has cooled.
This is not a worst-case scenario reserved for negligent landlords or rogue operators. It is the standard legal response to any fire death in the UK. The responsible person — whether that is a business owner, a managing agent, a facilities manager, or a company director — is in scope from the moment the fire service and police arrive.
Understanding what that means, in plain terms, is part of what it means to carry the responsible person duty seriously.
The Investigation Begins at the Scene
When a person dies in a fire, two investigations run simultaneously. The fire and rescue service investigates the cause and origin of the fire and assesses compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — the legislation that governs fire safety in non-domestic premises and the communal areas of residential buildings. The police investigate potential criminal liability, including manslaughter.
Both investigations will examine the same evidence: the state of the building, the fire safety measures in place, the fire risk assessment, maintenance records, training records, and any prior correspondence with enforcement authorities. If your fire risk assessment is out of date, poorly evidenced, or does not reflect the actual risks in the building, that will be apparent within hours.
The fire service will also review whether any enforcement notices, informal letters or audit findings were previously issued — and whether they were acted upon. An unheeded warning does not disappear. It becomes evidence.
The Three Legal Routes That Can Follow
There is no single legal outcome after a fire death. The route taken depends on the evidence, the severity of the failings, and the decisions of the Crown Prosecution Service. In practice, three routes exist — and they are not mutually exclusive.
What the Courts Have Actually Done
It is easy to treat legal consequences as abstract. The following cases are a useful corrective.
Leicester, 2014 — Haresh Rambhai Patel
A fire broke out at two adjoining properties in May 2013. Firefighters rescued three residents. There was no fire risk assessment, no evacuation strategy, no working alarms and no working emergency lights. Fire doors were missing or jammed. A fire extinguisher had not been inspected for 25 years. Safety warnings had been issued a year before the fire. They were ignored.
Patel was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment. Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service described his conduct as showing a shocking lack of regard for residents.
Brockley, London, 2022 — BUPA Care Services
In March 2016, London Fire Brigade attended a fire at the Manley Court care home in Brockley. Cedric Skyers, a 69-year-old wheelchair user, died after a fire broke out while he was smoking unsupervised in a garden shelter. A subsequent investigation found that although a smoking risk assessment existed for Mr Skyers, it failed to account for his use of emollient skin creams — which can be highly flammable if allowed to build up on skin, clothing or bedding.
BUPA Care Services was prosecuted by London Fire Brigade under the Fire Safety Order for failing to implement adequate fire safety arrangements. At Southwark Crown Court in January 2022, the company was fined £937,500 — at the time the highest ever fine for fire safety breaches in the UK — and ordered to pay £104,000 in prosecution costs. The case took more than five years to reach sentencing. London Fire Brigade's message after the verdict was direct: anyone with a legal responsibility for fire safety in a building should take note and ensure they are complying with the law.
Ipswich, 2024 — Home from Home Property Management Ltd
The company was found guilty of four Fire Safety Order offences in relation to a managed property. The company was fined £60,000 plus costs of £24,750. Director Edward Ottley received a ten-month custodial sentence, suspended for 18 months, 120 hours of unpaid work, and costs of £24,750.
The Role of the Fire Risk Assessment
In every prosecution under the Fire Safety Order, the fire risk assessment is central. Its absence is an immediate breach of Article 9 of the Order. Its inadequacy — an assessment that fails to identify real risks, or that was completed years ago and never reviewed — is treated almost as seriously as its absence.
What investigators and courts look for is not perfection. They look for evidence that the responsible person understood the risk, took it seriously, and acted proportionately on it. A current, properly conducted fire risk assessment — reviewed whenever circumstances change and at least annually for higher-risk premises — is the single most important piece of evidence a responsible person can produce.
It does not guarantee immunity from prosecution. But it demonstrates that the responsible person was doing their job. That distinction matters significantly in how investigations proceed and how courts approach sentencing.
What Responsible Persons Often Overlook
The responsible person duty under the Fire Safety Order does not require a fire to start before it applies. It is a continuous, active obligation — to assess, manage and review fire risk on an ongoing basis. Three things are commonly overlooked.
A Note on Corporate Manslaughter and Fire
Corporate manslaughter prosecutions following fire deaths are rare, but they are not impossible — and the risk is increasing. The Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, in which 72 people died, has still not resulted in a charging decision, illustrating how complex and long-running these investigations can be. But smaller cases have proceeded more quickly, and the post-2022 legislative environment has strengthened enforcement powers across the board.
For organisations — companies, managing agents, housing associations, businesses — the key question is whether senior management's decisions about fire safety contributed to conditions that caused the death. Where the answer is yes, and where the breach is gross, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 is available. Fines in corporate manslaughter cases are calculated as a proportion of annual turnover. For a company of meaningful size, the financial consequences are severe — independent of any civil claims from families of those who died.
The Honest Summary
Most responsible persons will never face a fire death on their premises. The purpose of this article is not to suggest otherwise. It is to be clear about what the law provides for, so that the people who carry the responsible person duty understand what they are carrying.
The obligation is not to prevent every possible fire. It is to take fire risk seriously, assess it properly, act on what the assessment finds, maintain the measures that are put in place, and keep the evidence that demonstrates all of the above. Done well, that is not an onerous burden. It is competent, professional management of a foreseeable risk.
Done poorly — or not done at all — it is something the courts have shown they will treat as a criminal matter.
We carry out fire risk assessments for premises of all types across Chester, the North West and North Wales — including residential blocks, commercial premises, hotels and industrial sites. If you are not confident that your current fire risk assessment is suitable, sufficient and up to date, get in touch.
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