Fire door inspections from £149

Since January 2023, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require the responsible person for every residential building over 11 metres to carry out quarterly checks of communal fire doors and annual checks of flat entrance doors. The checks must be recorded, and any defects must be addressed. For higher-risk residential buildings over 18 metres, the information must also be made available to the fire and rescue service. These duties sit alongside, but are separate from, the fire risk assessment itself.

A fire door is a complete set, not just the leaf. We inspect the door leaf, frame, hinges, self-closing device, intumescent seals, cold smoke seals, glazing, vision panels, letter plates, thresholds and signage. We also check that the installed door matches its certification evidence — a common gap where replacement doors have been fitted without confirming the rating.

Communal doors are the doors that protect the escape route — entrance doors to stairwells, lobby doors, riser cupboard doors and doors to bin stores. We check every communal door in the building on a quarterly basis, photograph each one, record its location and condition, and produce a defect schedule ranked by severity. This is the evidence an enforcement officer or building safety regulator will ask to see.

Flat entrance doors form part of the compartmentation that protects the communal escape route. The 2022 Regulations require these to be checked at least annually in buildings over 11 metres. We inspect from the communal side where possible, and arrange access with leaseholders where internal inspection is needed. We flag doors that are no longer fit for purpose, have been altered, or lack evidence of fire rating.

The most common defects are self-closers that no longer close and latch the door, intumescent strips that are missing or painted over, doors wedged or held open with no automatic release, and replacement hardware that is not fire-rated. On older stock we also find original timber doors that pre-date modern certification but may still be acceptable if evidenced — we distinguish between cosmetic wear and genuine fire performance failures.

You receive a door register with a photograph and condition summary for every inspected door, a prioritised defect schedule, and a recommended repair or replacement programme. We quote separately for any remedial works, or you can use the schedule with your own contractor. The report is formatted to support building safety case files and can be shared with residents, insurers and enforcement bodies.

Pricing starts at £149 for a small block with a limited number of communal doors and scales with the number of doors, the number of floors, and whether flat entrance door access is required. We confirm a fixed price before booking, and portfolio discounts are available for managing agents with multiple blocks.

The quarterly and annual door-checking duty sits within the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, made under article 24 of the Fire Safety Order and enforced by the local fire and rescue authority alongside the rest of the Order. Enforcement officers ask for the check records, not just evidence that doors look sound on the day of an inspection, so a responsible person without a running record is exposed even if the doors themselves are in reasonable condition. For buildings over 18 metres the requirement goes further: information about the condition of communal fire doors and any known fault with a flat entrance door must be shared with the fire and rescue service, usually via the building's information box or nominated contact. We date and reference every inspection against the previous one so a responsible person can produce a continuous record on request rather than a single certificate that only proves the building was compliant on one day.

A fire door only performs as tested if it closes fully into its frame from any open position and the latch engages, because a door resting open on its seals gives no protection at all. We test every self-closer through its full swing, not just from a few degrees ajar, since many closers that appear to work when nudged shut fail to complete the closing cycle from wider angles once spring tension has weakened or hinges have dropped. Overhead closers, concealed closers and free-swing devices linked to the fire alarm are each checked differently: free-swing closers must release and close on alarm activation, which we test by triggering a local sounder or interface rather than assuming the mechanism works because it did at commissioning. Adjustments made by cleaning contractors or residents to slow a door down for convenience are one of the most frequent causes of failure we record, and we note where a closer has clearly been tampered with rather than simply worn.

Many communal doors in older London stock, particularly Victorian and Edwardian conversions, were fitted before the current labelling regime and carry no visible certification plug or manufacturer's data plate. Rather than treating every unlabelled door as an automatic fail, we assess it against the physical evidence available: timber species and thickness, intumescent lippings, glazing beading, and any paperwork the freeholder holds from a previous refurbishment. Where a door cannot be evidenced as fire-resisting, we record it as unverified rather than compliant and recommend either third-party verification, upgrading in situ with an approved kit, or replacement, depending on the building's risk profile and the door's importance to the escape route. This distinction matters because wholesale replacement of doors that may already perform adequately is an avoidable cost, but relying on an unverified door in a protected stairwell is not a risk worth carrying.

Managing agents responsible for several blocks benefit from a sequenced quarterly programme rather than treating each building as an isolated booking. We align inspection dates to a rolling calendar so that reports land in a predictable pattern, flag any block that has slipped outside its quarterly window before it becomes a compliance gap, and use a consistent door-numbering convention across the portfolio so defects can be tracked block-to-block over time. This also lets us identify systemic issues quickly — a batch of closers from the same supplier failing early, or a contractor's replacement doors installed without correct certification across multiple sites — which is far harder to spot when each block is inspected by a different provider on an ad hoc basis.

The defect schedule we issue is only useful if the fixes it recommends are actually verified afterwards. We offer a costed remedial quotation alongside the report so a managing agent can instruct works without a second procurement round, and where a third-party contractor carries out the repairs instead, we re-inspect the specific doors flagged rather than charging for a full re-survey of the building. Re-inspection confirms the closer now completes its full cycle, the seal is continuous, and any replacement hardware carries appropriate fire-rated certification, and we update the door register so the record reflects the current condition rather than the defect that has since been resolved. Leaving a defect open on paper after it has been fixed on site is a common cause of confusion during a later building safety case review.

Fire door inspection is not yet a licensed trade in the way some other fire safety disciplines are, which means quality varies significantly between providers. We work to the competency framework set out by the Fire Door Inspection Scheme and BM TRADA guidance, and our inspectors are trained to recognise the difference between cosmetic wear, a genuine fire performance defect, and an unverifiable installation. When choosing an inspector, ask what qualification they hold specifically for door inspection, whether they carry professional indemnity insurance for the advice given, and whether the report distinguishes between a door that has failed and one that simply lacks paperwork — conflating the two either understates real risk or drives unnecessary replacement spend.