Section 156: 9 Fire Safety Duties Offices Missed
A great deal of health and safety guidance still says that a fire risk assessment only has to be recorded where you employ five or more people.
That stopped being true on 1 October 2023, when section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 amended the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The change applies to every responsible person, in every non-domestic premises, regardless of size or type of business.
The reform arrived in the middle of a programme of building safety changes aimed largely at high-rise residential buildings, which is why most office occupiers concluded it was not about them. Several parts of it are.
Nine duties that changed.
1. The five-employee recording threshold is gone
The headline, and the one that invalidates a lot of circulating advice.
Previously, the obligation to record significant findings applied in specific circumstances, including where the responsible person employed five or more people, where a licence was in force, or where an alterations notice had been served.
That is no longer the position. Every responsible person must now record their fire risk assessment, whatever the size or purpose of the premises. The London Fire Brigade sets out the change plainly, and the amending provision is section 156 itself.
For a four-person office that previously relied on the threshold, the position has changed entirely.
2. Record it in full, not just the significant findings
A subtler change and arguably the more demanding one.
The previous duty was to record the significant findings and any group especially at risk. The duty now is to record the completed fire risk assessment in full.
That is a different document. An assessment summarised down to its findings, with the reasoning and the detail left out, no longer meets the requirement.
3. Record your fire safety arrangements
Need Expert H&S Guidance?
Our qualified consultants can help you implement the right health & safety measures for your business.
A separate obligation from the assessment itself, and the one most likely to be missing entirely.
Responsible persons must record their fire safety arrangements, meaning how fire safety is actually managed in the premises: who does what, what the testing and maintenance regime is, how the evacuation procedure works, and how the whole thing is kept current.
Most organisations have these arrangements in practice and have never written them down as a single document, because until October 2023 nothing required it.
4. Record who carried out the assessment
A short requirement with an interesting effect.
Responsible persons must record the identity of any individual and, where applicable, the organisation engaged to undertake or review any or all of the fire risk assessment.
The practical consequence is accountability. Where an assessment was produced by somebody whose competence you could not evidence, that is now a matter of record rather than a detail lost in a file.
5. Record and share contact details, including a UK address
Responsible persons must record and keep updated their contact information, including a UK-based address, and share it with other responsible persons and, where applicable, residents of multi-occupied residential buildings.
For an entity managed from abroad, that UK address requirement is worth checking. It is a small obligation and precisely the sort that a foreign parent overlooks.
6. You must actively find the other responsible persons
The duty that changes behaviour in leased buildings.
Responsible persons must take reasonably practicable steps to ascertain the existence of other responsible persons who share, or have duties in respect of, the same premises, and of accountable persons where the Building Safety Act creates them.
Read that as written. It is not enough to cooperate with the parties you happen to know about. You have to look.
In a multi-tenant office building that means establishing who else holds duties: the building owner, the managing agent, other occupiers, and anyone controlling plant or common parts.
7. Cooperation and coordination were strengthened
Following directly from the above, and building on the pre-existing duty in article 22 of the Fire Safety Order.
Where more than one responsible person exists, including where the occupier and the building owner are different entities, the requirements for cooperation and coordination are increased. The practical output is a documented understanding of who is responsible for what, rather than an assumption that the landlord has it covered.
This is the same split that recurs throughout our coverage of leased premises, now with a firmer statutory footing.
8. The competence requirement for assessors
Worth understanding precisely, because it is easy to overstate.
Section 156 provides that where a responsible person appoints a person to make or review the fire risk assessment, that person must be competent. Guidance issued at the time indicated that this particular provision was to be commenced later than the changes taking effect from October 2023.
Confirm the current commencement position through specialist advice. The direction is unambiguous, and the sensible course is to be able to evidence the competence of whoever produces your assessment regardless of the precise commencement date, particularly given point four above.
9. Guidance now has status in proceedings
The enforcement dimension, and it changes how guidance should be treated.
The amendments strengthened the status of risk-based guidance approved by the Secretary of State, so that it may be used in proceedings to help determine whether compliance has been achieved or whether departure from it amounted to a breach of the Fire Safety Order.
That elevates the published sector guidance from helpful material to something with evidential weight. Departing from it is still possible and now needs a reason you would be content to explain.
The nine, in short
| Change | Old position | Position since October 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Recording threshold | Five or more employees | Every responsible person |
| What is recorded | Significant findings | The assessment in full |
| Arrangements | Not required in writing | Recorded |
| Assessor identity | Not recorded | Recorded |
| Contact details | Not required | Recorded, shared, UK address |
| Other responsible persons | Cooperate with those known | Take steps to find them |
| Cooperation | General duty | Strengthened |
| Assessor competence | Implicit | Express, commencement to confirm |
| Guidance | Advisory | May be used in proceedings |
The first two rows together are why an assessment that was compliant in 2022 may not be now, even though nothing about the building has changed.
What to do about it
Three checks, and they take very little time.
Look at the date. An assessment produced before October 2023 was written to the old recording requirements. It may be perfectly good and it will not have been written to record the assessment in full, and it will almost certainly not record the assessor's identity or your fire safety arrangements.
Look for the arrangements document. Most organisations do not have one, because until recently nothing asked for it. This is usually the largest single gap.
Ask who else holds duties in your building, in writing. Article 9 of the Fire Safety Order already requires review where the assessment is no longer valid or where there has been a significant change, and the review provision remains the mechanism through which all of this gets kept current.
Our fire risk assessment work covers all of the above, and periodic health and safety audits reliably surface assessments that predate the change.
For international groups
Two points.
This is England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland operate their own fire safety frameworks, and a group standard written around the Fire Safety Order does not describe all of the United Kingdom, let alone anywhere else.
The recording principle differs everywhere. Several jurisdictions covered in this series prescribe the fire documentation directly: Croatia requires an evacuation and rescue plan with a graphical part and practical drills, Greece and Bulgaria attach fire duties to appointed professionals, and Kenya requires an annual fire safety audit by an approved auditor separate from the general safety audit.
So the change described here is a British change with a British scope, and the wider lesson is the one this series keeps returning to: fire documentation is among the least transferable material a group holds. Keeping each entity's position current in one place is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite produces fire risk assessments written to the requirements as they now stand, which for many organisations means the existing document needs replacing rather than reviewing. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, finance and banking and IT and software organisations, most of them occupying premises they do not control and sharing them with other responsible persons.
Where offices span several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires of fire documentation, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If your fire risk assessment predates October 2023 and you have no separate record of your fire safety arrangements, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
Related Articles
Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
