Fire safety audit checklist. A printable audit checklist for checking that fire safety management is actually happening — the records, the testing, the training and the open actions — as distinct from assessing the risk itself.
This is the paper version. FireOptix does the same job on a phone, with the record filed against the building or the asset automatically.
What is on the sheet
- Whether a current fire risk assessment exists, who made it, and whether its significant findings are recorded
- Whether the actions from it have owners, dates and evidence of completion, and how many are open and overdue
- Testing and servicing records for alarm, lighting, extinguishers, doors and suppression: present, complete and in date against the premises' own regime
- Training, induction, drills and warden arrangements, checked as records rather than as assertions
- A walk of the premises against what the records claim, because an audit that never leaves the office audits paperwork
- Findings with a priority, an owner and a date, and a block recording what was escalated and to whom
Why this record matters
An audit and a risk assessment answer different questions. The assessment asks what could go wrong in this building; the audit asks whether what we said we would do is being done. A building can hold a perfectly good assessment and fail an audit comprehensively, and that is the most common shape of a serious fire safety failure — not an unidentified hazard, but an identified one that nobody closed.
So the checklist is built around evidence rather than opinion. Every row asks to see something: the record, the certificate, the signature, the closed action. 'Yes, we do that' is the answer an audit exists to go behind.
The walk is not optional and is on the sheet for that reason. Records say the fire doors were inspected; the corridor says one is wedged open with a bin. An audit that reconciles the two has done the job, and an audit that reads the file has confirmed the file.
Open and overdue actions are counted rather than described. A number is the one thing on an audit that cannot be written around, it is comparable with the last audit, and it is usually the first question anybody senior asks.
Use it with
- Fire risk assessment templateA printable fire risk assessment form, covering the premises, the people at risk, the hazards, the fire safety measures already in place and the significant findings that come out of it.
- Fire log bookA printable fire log book: a cover, an index of what belongs in it, and record pages for the tests, services, drills, training and findings that make up a premises' fire safety history.
- Fire safety enforcement response checklistA printable checklist for responding to a fire and rescue service audit, an informal notice, an enforcement notice or a prohibition notice — what to gather, who to tell and what to do with the deadline.
- Fire safety arrangements recordA pro-forma for writing down who does what on fire safety — the responsible person, the competent persons assisting, the wardens, and the arrangements for testing, training and review.
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© 2026 FireOptix. Free to print, copy and use in your business. Not for resale. Please keep this notice.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Written for England and Wales. General guidance, not legal advice. Checked October 2026.