What records does a responsible person actually need to keep?

Record-keeping is one of the least glamorous parts of fire safety management and one of the most consistently under-delivered — not usually because the underlying safety work isn't happening, but because nobody's kept a clear, retrievable record proving that it has.

What the RRFSO actually asks for

The current Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires certain records to be kept, with the exact extent scaling by the size and nature of the premises — larger or higher-risk premises generally need more formal record-keeping than a small, simple workplace. In practice, most responsible persons are better served by keeping thorough records regardless of whether the strict minimum would technically be lighter, because records are what turn "we did this" into something that can actually be evidenced later.

The core categories worth keeping

At minimum, this generally means the current fire risk assessment and its significant findings, the action plan and evidence of actions closed out, records of fire safety training provided to staff, and maintenance and servicing records for fire doors, alarms, emergency lighting and fire-fighting equipment.

• –The current fire risk assessment, including significant findings and the action plan
• –Evidence that FRA actions have actually been closed out — not just noted as complete
• –Fire safety training records for staff, including dates and content covered
• –Servicing and maintenance records for fire doors, alarms, emergency lighting and extinguishers
• –A fire door register recording routine checks, not just formal servicing visits
• –Records of any fire drills, evacuations or notable incidents

Why 'we did it, we just didn't write it down' doesn't hold up

A recurring and genuinely frustrating pattern is a responsible person who's confident the underlying work was done — the door was fixed, the alarm was serviced, the training happened — but can't produce the record to prove it when an assessor, insurer or enforcement officer asks. Fairly or not, an absence of records tends to get treated similarly to an absence of the work itself, because there's no way to tell the two apart from the outside.

Why paper and scattered digital records both tend to fail the same way

Paper records fail through loss, damage and simply not being to hand when needed. Scattered digital records — a folder of PDFs here, an email thread there, a spreadsheet someone stopped updating — fail in a subtler way: they exist somewhere, technically, but nobody can produce a complete, current picture quickly on request. Both failure modes have the same practical consequence during a real inspection or claim.

This is the specific gap that structured record-keeping software addresses — not doing the fire safety work itself, but making sure that when it happens, there's a single, retrievable, dated record of it, tied to the specific building and the specific door, alarm or action it relates to. On a single small premises, a well-organised folder can do this job adequately. Across a portfolio, that same approach tends to break down exactly when it matters most.

The records that exist but cannot be produced

Most organisations hold more evidence than they can retrieve. Servicing certificates sit in an inbox, door inspection sheets in a folder at the building, assessment actions in a spreadsheet on somebody's drive, and contractor reports on a portal whose login left with the previous manager. Nothing has been lost, exactly, and yet nobody can assemble a complete picture for one building in an afternoon.

The test worth applying is that: pick one building, ask for the current assessment, the open actions, the last servicing records and the evidence that the last round of actions was closed. If that takes days or requires several people, the records exist but the record-keeping does not.

Common mistakes

• –Evidence spread across inboxes, drives, portals and site folders
• –No single view of one building's complete position
• –Records tied to individuals rather than held by the organisation
• –Portal access that leaves with the person who set it up
• –Keeping documents without the actions they generated
• –No retention rule, so records are discarded or kept arbitrarily