What is a fire risk assessment?
A fire risk assessment is a structured review of a building that identifies fire hazards, who is at risk, and what must change to reduce that risk. It is the document the responsible person is judged on.
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<a href="https://fireoptix.co.uk/glossary/fire-risk-assessment">What is a fire risk assessment?</a> — diagram by
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</figure>It is the foundation of fire safety management in a building, not a form to be filed. The assessment identifies the sources of ignition and fuel, the people who could be harmed, the measures already in place, and the actions needed to close the gap between the two.
The output that matters is the action plan. An assessment that lists twenty hazards and no owner or date for fixing them has described a building without changing it, and that distinction is what an inspecting officer looks for first.
Assessments are reviewed rather than done once. A change of use, a refurbishment, a near miss or simply the passage of time all make an existing assessment less true than it was, and the review is what catches that.
In practice
An assessment produced annually and filed each time.
Three assessments sit in a folder. Each identifies the same blocked escape route, and each records it as a significant finding.
The assessment is not the control. The action plan coming out of it is, and a finding that reappears across assessments is evidence that the responsible person knew and that nothing happened.
An inspecting officer reads the open actions before the assessment itself.
What goes wrong in practice
- An assessment completed and filed with none of its actions assigned to anyone, so the findings sit open indefinitely.
- A review date that passes unnoticed because it lives in the document rather than in a system that raises it.
- Actions closed on paper without evidence of the work, leaving nothing to show an inspector who asks what was done.
- An assessment that describes the building as designed rather than as it is now, after tenants, partitions and stored goods have changed it.