The Fire Safety Log Book: What to Record

A fire safety log book is the single place a building's fire safety records live: alarm tests, emergency lighting checks, extinguisher servicing, door checks, drills, training, and the fire risk assessment that sits behind all of it.

Two things about it are worth getting straight immediately. First, no regulation requires a book called a fire safety log book. What the law requires is that certain things be recorded — and a log book is simply the most practical way to hold them together. Second, and more usefully, there is no statutory retention period. Not in the Fire Safety Order's risk assessment article, not in its maintenance article. If you have seen a specific number of years stated as a legal requirement, it was not coming from the Order.

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

What the Law Actually Requires You to Record

The assessment and the arrangements — in full, in all circumstances

The recording duty sits in Article 9(6) of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005:

"As soon as practicable after the assessment is made or reviewed, the responsible person must make a record of the assessment or review, which must in particular include the information prescribed by paragraph (7)."

And Article 9(7) prescribes what that record must contain:

"The prescribed information is—(a) the findings of the assessment, including the measures which have been or will be taken by the responsible person pursuant to this Order; and (b) any group of persons identified by the assessment as being especially at risk."

Note "as soon as practicable" — the record is not a tidying-up job for later.

This changed for many premises on 1 October 2023. Under section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, GOV.UK guidance states:

"You must now record the fire risk assessment in full (including all the findings) and the fire safety arrangements for your premises in all circumstances."

The former "five or more employees" threshold is gone. A two-person business now has the same recording duty as a large employer. Any log book bought or template downloaded before late 2023 may still be built around the old threshold — worth checking.

Maintenance: a system, evidenced

Article 17(1) requires that premises, facilities, equipment and devices:

"are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair."

Read that carefully, because the nuance matters: Article 17 does not itself require records. It requires a system. But a system of maintenance that leaves no trace is indistinguishable from no system at all — and "suitable system" is precisely the sort of phrase an enforcing authority will ask you to demonstrate. The log book is how you demonstrate it. That is an evidential necessity rather than a direct statutory duty, and it is more honest to say so than to claim Article 17 mandates a book.

The residential add-ons

If you are responsible for residential premises in England, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 add explicit record duties on top.

Regulation 10 applies to any building containing two or more sets of domestic premises with common parts residents would need to evacuate through; its door-check duties at paragraphs (4) and (6) then apply where that building is above 11 metres in height. Communal fire doors must be checked "at least every 3 months"; for flat entrance doors the responsible person "must use best endeavours to undertake checks ... at least every 12 months". And on records:

"The responsible person must keep a record of the steps taken to comply with the obligation in paragraph (4)"

including documenting access attempts where a resident did not provide access. That last part is the one people miss: the record of the attempt is itself the compliance evidence. If you knocked three times and got no answer, the knocking is worth nothing unless it is written down.

Regulation 7 requires monthly checks of firefighters' lifts, evacuation lifts and essential firefighting equipment in high-rise residential buildings, and:

"The responsible person must make a record of the monthly checks undertaken pursuant to this regulation and make that record accessible to the residents of the building."

That is a genuinely different obligation from everything else here — it is the one record you must actively make available to residents, not merely hold. A log book locked in the manager's office does not satisfy it.

Our walkthrough of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 covers these regulation by regulation.

What Goes In

Nothing prescribes a format, so organise it however suits the building. What follows is the content, grouped by what it evidences.

The assessment layer

• The current fire risk assessment in full, including findings and groups especially at risk.
• The review history: date, who reviewed it, what changed, what triggered the review.
• The action plan, with each item's priority, owner, target date and — critically — its closure date. An action plan with no closures is a list of known defects you have documented and left.

Routine testing

The frequencies below are industry convention drawn from the relevant British Standards, not duties in the Fire Safety Order — the exception is the Regulation 10 fire-door frequency, which is a legal requirement. What the Order fixes is that the maintenance system works and can be evidenced; the intervals are how the sector conventionally achieves that.

• Alarm and detection: weekly call-point test (rotating the point tested), plus periodic servicing.
• Emergency lighting: function tests and the longer duration test.
• Fire doors: condition checks, and for residential buildings above 11 metres the Regulation 10 frequencies above.
• Extinguishers: annual service and monthly visual checks.
• Sprinklers, suppression, smoke control, dry and wet risers, evacuation alert systems where fitted.
• Firefighters' and evacuation lifts, on the monthly cycle where Regulation 7 applies.

People

• Drills: date, scenario, evacuation time, what went wrong, what changed as a result. A drill record that says only "drill completed" has recorded attendance, not learning.
• Staff training, including new starters and supply or temporary staff.
• Fire warden appointments and who is currently deputising.
• Individual evacuation plans for anyone who cannot evacuate unaided — see our guide to PEEPs and who needs one.

Faults, changes and events

• Every fault found, with what was done and when it was resolved. Unresolved entries are the most valuable pages in the book — they show the system working — but only if they are eventually closed out.
• False alarms and actuations, with the cause. A pattern of false alarms in one zone is a finding.
• Any change to the premises, occupancy or use, plus contractor works — especially hot works permits.
• Visits from the fire and rescue authority, and anything arising.

The evacuation plan itself belongs alongside all this: our guide to what a fire evacuation plan must contain covers that document.

How Long to Keep It

The honest answer, which the log-book sellers on page one of Google will not give you: the Fire Safety Order sets no retention period. Article 9 contains none. Article 17 contains none.

So retention is a judgement driven by what the records are for:

• Your next review needs the last one. Article 9(3) requires review "regularly ... and particularly if— (a) there is reason to suspect that it is no longer valid; or (b) there has been a significant change". You cannot sensibly review against a document you have thrown away.
• Demonstrating a "suitable system of maintenance" needs a run, not a snapshot. One month of alarm tests does not evidence a system. A multi-year history does.
• Third parties ask for history. Insurers, enforcing authorities, prospective purchasers and tenants may all want to see more than the current page.
• Trends only appear over time. Recurring faults in the same zone, drills that keep overrunning, actions that keep slipping — none of that is visible in a single cycle.

A sensible working position: keep the current assessment and every superseded version, plus a meaningful multi-year run of test, maintenance, drill and training records. Where an insurer or a contract specifies a period, follow that — it will be a commercial requirement rather than a statutory one, which is a distinction worth understanding rather than blurring.

Paper or Digital

Nothing in the Order specifies a medium, so a digital record is exactly as valid as a hardback book. In practice digital wins on the things that actually go wrong with log books: it does not get lost in a move, it does not lose the pages someone tore out, it is searchable when an inspector asks for the last four quarterly door checks, and it can be produced remotely.

The one advantage paper genuinely has is that it sits physically in the building where the person doing the weekly test is standing. If you go digital, make sure the person actually doing the checks can record them at the point of doing them, or entries will be reconstructed from memory later — which is worse than either option.

Common Failures

From the way these records typically go wrong:

• The book stops. Diligent entries for eight months, then nothing. A partial record can be worse than none, because it dates the point at which the system lapsed.
• Actions raised, never closed. See above — an open action from three years ago is documented knowledge of an unaddressed risk.
• Tests recorded, results not. "Alarm tested" without a result is an attendance log.
• The pre-2023 template. Any log book or template built around the old five-employee recording threshold is out of date.
• Access attempts not written down. For Regulation 10 flat entrance door checks, the attempt is the evidence.
• Residents cannot see the Regulation 7 record. It must be accessible to them, not merely held.

If you want to sanity-check the assessment the whole book rests on, the free FRA report quality scorer flags common gaps, the FRA review date calculator sets the next review date, and our 30-point fire risk assessment checklist covers the on-site ground that feeds the records.

Summary

The log book is not the legal requirement; the records are. Article 9(6) and (7) require the assessment and review to be recorded as soon as practicable, with findings and groups especially at risk. Since 1 October 2023 the assessment and the fire safety arrangements must be recorded in full in all circumstances, with no employee threshold. Article 17 requires a suitable system of maintenance, and while it does not itself demand records, an unevidenced system is indistinguishable from no system. In residential buildings in England above 11 metres, Regulation 10 requires a record of the steps taken on flat entrance door checks including refused access, and Regulation 7 requires the monthly lift and equipment check record to be accessible to residents.

On retention: no statutory period exists. Keep the current assessment and its superseded versions, plus a meaningful multi-year run of testing and maintenance history, because that is what the next review, a "suitable system" claim, and any third party asking will actually need.

For assessors who need this history to survive between visits, AssessKit structures every assessment to a recognised methodology (PAS 79-1 for non-domestic premises, BS 9792:2025 for housing), tracks each remedial action through to its closure date, and holds review dates per site so the record stays continuous rather than restarting each year. Start free — the Free plan covers two assessments a month, no card required. See pricing or read about who is building it.

Sources

• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 9 — Risk assessment, including the recording duty at 9(6) and 9(7) (legislation.gov.uk)
• Article 17 — Maintenance (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 — SI 2022/547 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulation 7 — Lifts and essential fire-fighting equipment, including the resident-accessible record (legislation.gov.uk)
• Regulation 10 — Fire doors, including the record of steps taken (legislation.gov.uk)
• Fire safety responsibilities under section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (GOV.UK)