How Often Should a Fire Risk Assessment Be Reviewed?

There is no fixed legal interval for reviewing a fire risk assessment in the UK. The law requires you to review it regularly to keep it up to date — and especially whenever something significant changes or you have reason to think it is no longer valid. Annual review is widely treated as good practice for many premises, but "valid for 12 months" is a misconception: the real test is whether the assessment still reflects the building and its risks.

This guide explains the legal duty, why there is no single answer, the events that should trigger a review regardless of the calendar, and how to set a sensible cadence for your building.

This article summarises UK fire safety law for educational purposes and is not legal advice. The responsible person carries the legal liability for keeping the assessment current, even where a competent person carries out the review. For specific compliance questions, consult a competent fire risk assessor or your local fire and rescue authority.

What the Law Actually Says

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 sets the duty in Article 9(3):

"Any such assessment must be reviewed by the responsible person regularly so as to keep it up to date and particularly if— (a) there is reason to suspect that it is no longer valid; or (b) there has been a significant change ..."

Read that carefully, because it is the whole answer. The duty is to keep the assessment up to date through regular review, with two specific triggers called out: suspicion that it is no longer valid, and significant change. There is no "every 12 months" in the statute. The law sets an outcome — a current, valid assessment — and leaves the cadence to the responsible person's judgement of the building.

This is deliberate. A low-risk, unchanging office and a busy care home with new residents arriving every month cannot sensibly be held to the same fixed interval. The duty scales with the building.

Why "Valid for 12 Months" Is a Myth

You will see assessments described as "valid for a year" and review reminders set to exactly 12 months. Annual review is a reasonable default for many premises, and there is nothing wrong with using it as a working cadence. The problem is treating the date as the test.

An assessment is not valid because it is less than a year old. It is valid because it still reflects the building, its use, its occupants, and its risks. If a building is reconfigured in month three, the assessment can be out of date long before the annual reminder fires. Conversely, a genuinely unchanged low-risk building does not magically become unsafe on the 366th day. The calendar is a prompt to check — not the thing the law cares about.

The Triggers That Override the Calendar

These are the "significant change" and "no longer valid" events from Article 9(3). Any of them should prompt a review regardless of when the last one was done:

• Building works or layout changes — new walls, removed compartmentation, a changed escape route, an extension.
• Change of use — part of the premises now used differently (storage becomes a workshop; an office floor becomes a gym).
• Change in occupancy — more people, different people, or occupants with different needs (for example, residents with reduced mobility).
• New processes or hazards — new equipment, flammable materials, or a new high-risk activity.
• A fire or near-miss — any incident is direct evidence that something in the fire safety arrangements needs re-examining.
• New information about the building — a survey finding, a defect discovered, a cladding concern.
• New regulatory requirements — for residential blocks, for instance, the duties under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 changed what assessments need to cover.

The discipline is to treat these as automatic triggers, not "we'll catch it at the annual review." A near-miss in February should not wait until the December reminder.

Sensible Cadences by Building Type

Because the law leaves the interval to judgement, here is a pragmatic starting point — always subject to the triggers above and the specific building.

These are working defaults, not legal minimums. The right answer for any specific building is whatever keeps the assessment suitable, sufficient, and current — which is the only thing Article 9 actually requires.

For HMOs in particular, licence conditions and council enforcement policies often expect annual review as a matter of course — we cover that in the HMO fire risk assessment guide. To work out a specific schedule for a building, including the trigger events that would bring it forward, our review date calculator does the arithmetic for you.

How to Keep On Top of Reviews

For a single building, a diary reminder and a note of the trigger events is enough. The problem multiplies when you are responsible for — or assessing — many buildings, each with its own review date and its own action plan still working through to completion.

This is where reviews quietly slip. A missed review is not just an administrative lapse; it is a building running on an assessment the law may no longer regard as valid. The practical answer is a system that holds every building's review date and surfaces them before they fall due, rather than a spreadsheet you remember to open. The recurring nature of this duty — reviews due, actions outstanding, reassessments approaching — is the real ongoing workload of fire safety compliance, far more than any single assessment.

Summary

Fire risk assessments must be reviewed regularly to stay up to date, and particularly whenever there is a significant change or reason to suspect the assessment is no longer valid — that is the duty in Article 9(3), and it sets no fixed interval. Annual review is a fair working default for many premises, but the legal test is currency and validity, not a date. Treat significant changes and incidents as automatic triggers, and keep a system that does not let review dates slip.

AssessKit is built around exactly this recurring duty: a site-by-site portfolio with review reminders and action tracking, so reviews surface before they fall due and nothing runs on a stale assessment. Start free — the Free plan includes two assessments a month, with no card required. See pricing for the full plans.

Sources

• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, Article 9 — Risk assessment (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (legislation.gov.uk)