Fire Safety Act 2021: What Changed for UK Fire Risk Assessors

The Fire Safety Act 2021 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021 and was commenced on 16 May 2022. It amends the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the Fire Safety Order) to clarify its scope — specifically regarding the structure, external walls, and flat entrance doors of multi-occupied residential buildings.

If you carry out fire risk assessments on residential blocks, HMOs, or any building with multiple dwellings, this legislation directly affects what your assessment must cover. Here is what changed and what it means for your reports.

This article summarises the legislation for educational purposes and is not legal advice. For specific compliance questions, consult a qualified fire safety solicitor or your enforcing authority.

What the Act Does

The Fire Safety Act 2021 inserts new provisions into Article 6 of the Fire Safety Order. It clarifies that the Order applies to:

1. The structure of a building containing two or more sets of domestic premises
2. External walls of such buildings, including cladding, balconies, and anything attached to the exterior
3. Any common parts of the building
4. Individual flat entrance doors that open onto common parts

Before the Act, there was ambiguity about whether the Fire Safety Order covered the building structure and external walls of residential buildings. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 Report (October 2019) recommended that this be clarified. The Fire Safety Act 2021 is that clarification.

What This Means for Your Fire Risk Assessments

External walls are now explicitly in scope

Your fire risk assessment for a multi-occupied residential building must now consider the external wall system. This includes:

• The external wall construction (brick, concrete, render, cladding)
• Any cladding system and its fire performance
• Balcony construction and materials
• Insulation materials within the external wall

You are not expected to conduct invasive testing of external walls during a standard fire risk assessment. But you are expected to record what you can observe and, where there are concerns about the wall construction, recommend that the responsible person commissions a more detailed external wall survey.

For buildings over 18 metres, this may involve a PAS 9980 external wall assessment — a separate specialist discipline. Your role as a fire risk assessor is to flag the need, not to carry out the full external wall appraisal.

The Fire Risk Assessment Prioritisation Tool (FRAPT)

The government published the Fire Risk Assessment Prioritisation Tool (FRAPT) alongside the Act's commencement. Developed with the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Fire Sector Federation, FRAPT is an online questionnaire that scores buildings across five priority tiers — from Very High (Tier 1) to Very Low (Tier 5) — to help responsible persons decide which buildings need updated fire risk assessments first.

FRAPT is for responsible persons, not assessors. But you should know it exists because:

• Clients who have used FRAPT may arrive with a tier rating and ask you to prioritise their higher-tier buildings first
• A Tier 1 or Tier 2 result advises immediate or urgent action — these clients will want an assessment quickly
• Answering "don't know" to any FRAPT question automatically scores it at the highest level, so some clients may have inflated priority ratings simply because they lacked building information that you can provide during the assessment

FRAPT does not replace a fire risk assessment. It is a triage tool for sequencing work — not a risk rating. Make sure clients understand the difference.

Flat entrance doors are in scope

Individual flat entrance doors that open onto common parts are now covered by the Fire Safety Order. Your assessment should include:

• The fire rating of flat entrance doors (typically FD30S)
• Condition of self-closing devices
• Intumescent strips and cold smoke seals
• Gap dimensions
• Whether the door has been modified (letterboxes, cat flaps — these can compromise fire resistance)

This is a practical change that adds time to residential block assessments. Each flat entrance door should be inspected as part of the common parts fire risk assessment.

The responsible person's duties have not changed — the scope has

The Fire Safety Act does not create new duties. The responsible person's existing obligations under the Fire Safety Order — to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment and to implement preventive and protective measures — remain the same. What has changed is the scope of what those duties apply to.

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022

Alongside the Act, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/547) came into force on 23 January 2023. These Regulations impose additional requirements on responsible persons for residential buildings in England. The duty bands depend on building height — the structure below summarises the operative regulations.

For all multi-occupied residential buildings (two or more sets of domestic premises):

• Provide residents with fire safety instructions, including how to report a fire and the evacuation strategy (Regulation 9)
• Provide residents with information that fire doors should be kept shut when not in use and self-closing devices should not be tampered with (Regulation 10, information limb)

For buildings over 11 metres in height (in addition to the above):

• Undertake quarterly checks of fire doors in communal areas (Regulation 10)
• Undertake annual checks of flat entrance doors (Regulation 10), recording access attempts where the resident does not provide access

For high-rise residential buildings — 18 metres or seven storeys (in addition to all of the above):

• Install and maintain a secure information box (Regulation 4)
• Prepare a record of the design and materials of the external walls plus identified risks and mitigations (Regulation 5; onward provision to the fire and rescue authority is handled by Regulation 11)
• Prepare floor plans and a building plan (Regulation 6; onward provision to the local fire and rescue authority is handled by Regulation 11, not by Regulation 6 itself)
• Conduct monthly checks of firefighter lifts, evacuation lifts, and essential fire-fighting equipment; notify the fire and rescue authority within 24 hours where a fault cannot be fixed (Regulation 7)
• Install wayfinding signage visible in low-light conditions on each landing (Regulation 8)

For a regulation-by-regulation walkthrough with verbatim operative text, see Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022: What Assessors Need to Know.

How this affects your reports

When assessing multi-occupied residential buildings, your report should check whether the responsible person is meeting these Regulation requirements. Non-compliance should be recorded as a finding with recommended actions.

For a full breakdown of how to structure your assessment, see our PAS 79 fire risk assessment guide. For the wider legal and standards framework these 2022 Regulations sit within — including BS 9999, BS 5839, and the competence expectations — see our overview of UK fire risk assessment guidelines.

Practical Impact on Assessors

Assessment time has increased. Inspecting flat entrance doors and recording external wall observations adds 30-60 minutes to a typical residential block assessment. Factor this into your FRA fee calculations.

Competence expectations are higher. The government's Fire Risk Assessor Competence Framework (published alongside the regulations) sets expectations for assessor qualifications when working on higher-risk buildings. If you assess buildings over 18 metres, ensure your competence and CPD records reflect this.

Documentation requirements are stricter. The Fire Safety Regulations require the responsible person to record the fire risk assessment in full. This was already best practice, but it is now a legal requirement for multi-occupied residential buildings. Your reports should be comprehensive enough to serve as that record.

What Has Not Changed

• The Fire Safety Order still applies to the common parts (it always did)
• You are still not required to assess the interior of individual flats (unless you are also doing an HMO assessment under the Housing Act 2004)
• The responsible person's duty to review the assessment regularly remains unchanged
• Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legislation — this Act applies to England and Wales only

Summary

The Fire Safety Act 2021 closed a scope gap in the Fire Safety Order by explicitly including building structure, external walls, and flat entrance doors. The Fire Safety Regulations added ongoing duties for door checks, resident information, and (for taller buildings) wayfinding signage.

For assessors, the practical impact is: check and record external wall construction, inspect flat entrance doors, and verify the responsible person is meeting the Regulation requirements. Your reports need to cover this scope.

For tools to help structure your assessments, see our free fire door inspection checklist and PAS 79 report guide.

AssessKit is being built to include Fire Safety Act 2021 scope — external wall recording, flat entrance door inspection fields, and Regulation compliance checks — as standard. Join the waitlist to be notified when we launch.

Sources

• Fire Safety Act 2021 — UK Legislation
• Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 — UK Legislation
• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — UK Legislation
• Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 Report — October 2019
• Fire Risk Assessment Prioritisation Tool (FRAPT) — Home Office
• Fire Safety Act 2021 factsheet: FRAPT — GOV.UK