Emergency fire risk assessment from £99

There is a difference between wanting an assessment quickly and needing one because something has already gone wrong. The second category has a document behind it: a notice from the fire and rescue authority, a letter from a licensing team, an insurer's condition, a solicitor's enquiry that has stopped a transaction, or a resident complaint that has escalated. What these have in common is that someone external is now waiting on you, usually with a date attached, and the assessment is the thing standing between you and closing it. That changes how the work should be run — not just faster, but written to answer the specific question that was asked.

A notice from the fire and rescue authority is not a request and the compliance date on it is not negotiable by ignoring it. An enforcement notice specifies the matters the authority considers a failure to comply with the Fire Safety Order and the steps required to remedy them; a prohibition notice restricts or bans use of all or part of the premises with immediate effect, and it does not require a compliance period. In both cases the first thing you need is an accurate, independent picture of the building from a competent assessor: what the authority found, whether it is right, what else is there, and what the proportionate remedy is. We write the assessment so each point on the notice can be tracked to a finding and an action, which is what an officer looks for when they return.

Insurers have tightened materially on fire safety evidence, and the questions now arrive earlier and in more detail. Common triggers are a renewal questionnaire asking for the date and author of the current assessment, a condition requiring the action plan to be closed out, or a survey by the insurer's own risk engineer that raises findings needing an independent view. A current assessment by a named, registered assessor with a prioritised action plan is generally what satisfies them; an undated tick sheet with no author is generally what does not. Where a renewal date is days away, tell us the date when you call and we work backwards from it.

HMO licensing officers routinely ask for a current written assessment as part of an application, a renewal or an inspection, and an application without one sits still. Buyers' solicitors and lenders increasingly ask for the same on leasehold sales, particularly in blocks where the external wall or the fire door position has been queried. These are deadline-driven in a quieter way than a notice, but the cost of the delay is often higher — a stalled completion, a licence refused and re-applied for, a chain that collapses. In each case the practical answer is the same: a proper assessment, quickly, by somebody whose registration the reader can verify.

Three things change. The instruction is placed ahead of the routine diary rather than in it, so the survey happens within 24 hours wherever the building allows and often the same day. The assessor is briefed on the document behind the deadline before they attend, so the survey deliberately covers the points raised rather than discovering them incidentally. And the reporting order is reversed: significant findings are given to you verbally on site and, where you need it, in a short written summary the same day, with the full PAS 79 report following within 24 hours. If your officer, insurer or solicitor needs to speak to the assessor, they can.

It does not mean a lighter assessment, and it does not mean we will write what somebody wants to read. An assessment produced to clear a deadline is worth nothing if it does not survive the scrutiny that follows, and in enforcement situations the scrutiny is guaranteed. The findings are what the assessor finds. Where the news is bad, the report says so and sets out the proportionate remedy and a realistic timescale — which, in our experience, is a far better position in front of an enforcing authority than a clean report nobody believes.

Emergency instructions are priced the same way as any other: from £99, by floors, units, size and complexity, fixed in writing before we attend. There is no surcharge for a working-hours visit. Where the situation needs more than an assessment — a fire door survey, an alarm or emergency lighting review, support in corresponding with the enforcing authority — we quote that separately and only if you ask. We do not carry out the remedial building work we recommend, so nothing on the action plan is there to create a second invoice.