Commercial fire risk assessment from £99

All of them. The Fire Safety Order applies to every non-domestic premises, and since 2022 the assessment must be written down regardless of how many people you employ. Landlords will usually ask for it at lease renewal, and insurers increasingly ask to see it before settling a claim.

Under the Fire Safety Order, the responsible person for a commercial premises is usually the employer, the person in control of the building, or the occupier if they have some control over the premises. Where more than one business shares a building — a common situation on London high streets and in serviced offices — each responsible person must cooperate and coordinate their assessments so that gaps at the boundary between units, such as a shared stairwell or fire alarm system, don't fall through the cracks. Non-compliance is a criminal offence, and enforcement officers from the London Fire Brigade's fire safety regulation team can issue prohibition notices that close a premises with immediate effect if the risk is severe.

Beyond the physical building, a commercial assessment examines how the place is run: who is trained, who sweeps the building, and whether the last drill was actually recorded.

The findings vary far more by sector than in residential work. In offices, the recurring issues are fire doors propped for ventilation, escape routes narrowed by stored furniture after a refit, and fire marshal lists that haven't been updated since staff turnover. In hospitality and retail, kitchen extraction and grease build-up, storage of flammable cleaning products near heat sources, and staff who have never actually taken part in a drill are the most common gaps. In warehousing and light industry, the biggest issues tend to be racking that blocks a designated escape route, inadequate separation between storage and any hot-work areas, and battery charging bays for forklifts or e-bikes located without proper ventilation or separation.

Small offices and retail units can usually be surveyed within a few working days and assessed on site within an hour. Larger sites — warehouses, hotels, multi-floor offices — take longer on site but we schedule around your trading hours so the assessment doesn't interrupt business. The written report is delivered within 24 hours of the visit in every case, and we flag anything urgent verbally before we leave site.

Price depends on floor area, number of storeys, occupancy type and process-specific hazards. A single-storey retail unit is more straightforward than a commercial kitchen with extraction and gas, or a warehouse with racking, mezzanine floors and vehicle movements. Multi-site businesses benefit from consolidated pricing and reporting across the estate, with a consistent assessor team so findings are comparable site to site.

The most consequential commercial failures we see are alarm systems that were specified for the building's original use and never reassessed after a change of occupier — a warehouse converted to a gym, for example, has very different occupancy and evacuation needs. Fire doors held open with wedges or magnetic devices not linked to the alarm, escape routes obstructed by delivery stock, and fire extinguishers that are present but past their service date are all common and generally inexpensive to correct once identified.

Have your building's layout plans, any existing fire risk assessment, alarm and emergency lighting service records, and a note of who your fire marshals currently are. If the premises operates shifts or varies significantly by time of day — a restaurant's lunch service versus a quiet afternoon, for example — tell us so the assessment reflects genuine peak occupancy rather than whatever happens to be present during the visit.

We assess tents, marquees, pop-ups and festival builds — including work delivered for Audi at Wilderness Festival. Temporary structures have their own failure modes: fabric flame ratings, generator and cable routing, exit widths against expected crowd numbers, and how quickly the site can be cleared in poor weather.

You receive a PAS 79 report with a prioritised action plan you can put to your landlord, insurer or head office. For multi-site or franchised businesses, we can produce a consolidated summary across locations to support estate-wide risk management, and we're available to advise on remedial works or reassess once changes are made.