Do you actually need this?
Do you need a new fire risk assessment every year?
Fire safety companies sell an annual fire risk assessment as if the law set the date. It does not. For ordinary premises the annual job is your own review, and the professional re-assessment is every three to five years. Sleeping risk is the exception. Here is the distinction.
What you were told: "Your fire risk assessment is due for renewal. We'll be out next month, same as last year."
What the law says: the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9(3): review the assessment regularly so as to keep it up to date, and particularly if there's reason to suspect it's no longer valid or there's been a significant change. No interval. No word "annual". No word "renewal".
The assessment and the review are different jobs
A suitable and sufficient assessment of the fire risk, recorded in full (since October 2023, whatever your size). For anything beyond a small simple premises, a registered assessor. For sleeping risk, a registered assessor every year.
You, once a year and after any change, walking the premises with the existing assessment in your hand. Is each finding still true? Has each action been done? Has anything changed: layout, occupancy, process, tenant? Date it, sign it, file it with the assessment.
When a full re-assessment is actually due
- Sleeping risk (hotels, HMOs, care homes, flats above): every year.
- High occupancy, vulnerable occupants, hazardous processes: every year or two.
- Ordinary commercial premises: every three to five years, or after a significant change.
- After a fire, a near miss, an enforcement visit, or a change in the law.
Where the money goes
A £300 assessment sold annually to a shop is £1,500 over five years for a document that would have been fine reviewed by the owner in years two to five and redone once. At scale, across a national provider's customer base, that gap is the business model.
What you shouldn’t be sold
- The annual "renewal". Your review is annual. The assessment isn't.
- A three-year contract for annual assessments. You're buying a service you mostly don't need annually, on a term you can't leave.
- Kit in the same visit. The assessor who finds you need a new alarm panel and quotes for it on the spot has stopped being an assessor.
- The old five-employee rule. Anyone still saying you don't need it recorded is three years out of date.
Quick answers
- How often does a fire risk assessment need to be redone?
- The Fire Safety Order says review it regularly and whenever there is reason to think it is no longer valid. There is no statutory interval. The convention that works: you review it every year and after any change; a professional re-does it every three to five years for ordinary premises, and every year where there is sleeping risk, high occupancy or hazardous processes.
- What counts as a review?
- A walk-round against the existing assessment, by you, checking each finding is still true and each action has been done, then a dated note that you did it. It takes an hour and costs nothing.
This is general information about UK compliance, written for the person paying the bill. It isn’t legal advice. If your situation is unusual, get a professional to look at it.