Fire risk assessment reviews and renewals from £99

The Fire Safety Order requires the assessment to be kept up to date and reviewed regularly, but sets no fixed interval — the interval has to suit the building. What triggers a review is not the calendar alone but change: a fire or near miss, building work, a change of occupancy or use, a new tenant with a different risk profile, a significant increase in occupancy, or updated guidance or legislation. In the absence of change, the widely accepted practice is annual review for higher-risk residential blocks and premises with sleeping occupants, and every one to two years for lower-risk commercial premises. Insurers and enforcement officers both tend to treat anything over two years old as stale.

These words get used interchangeably and it costs people money. A review revisits an existing, adequate assessment: the assessor reads it, attends, checks what has changed, verifies the action plan and reissues an updated document. A renewal is a review carried out at the end of the assessment's stated interval. A fresh assessment starts from nothing and is only genuinely needed where there is no previous report, where the previous one was inadequate or produced by someone whose competence cannot be evidenced, or where the building has changed so much that comparison is meaningless. We tell you which of the three the building needs before quoting.

The most valuable part of a review is not the new findings — it is checking the old ones. Action plans routinely get marked complete on a spreadsheet when the work was partial, done to the wrong standard, or never done at all. Self-closers fitted but adjusted so they do not latch; a fire door replaced but with the wrong intumescent strip; emergency lighting serviced but two fittings still dead. The review inspects each closed action and states whether it is genuinely resolved, partially resolved or outstanding. Where an action has slipped for more than one cycle, the report says so, because a repeated open action is a much harder thing to explain later than a new one.

Buildings drift. Between two annual visits a block will typically acquire new storage in a lobby, a leaseholder's replaced entrance door, a new EV charge point in the car park, a repurposed store room, contractors' materials in a riser cupboard, or a new commercial tenant downstairs with a different fire load. None of these get reported to anyone; they are simply found. The review exists to catch that drift before it compounds.

You do not have to stay with whoever produced the last report. We regularly take over assessments from other firms, and the process is the same: we read the previous document, attend the building, and reissue in our own format. Where the previous assessment was sound we say so and build on it — you should not pay for a full reassessment because a supplier changed. Where it was inadequate, remote, or produced by someone whose competence cannot be evidenced, we explain exactly why a fresh assessment is needed rather than simply asserting it.

Occasionally a review uncovers something that changes the building's position: evidence that compartmentation is not as assumed, a stay-put strategy that is no longer supportable, or works carried out without building control involvement. We will tell you straight away rather than at the end of the report, set out interim measures, and scope what is needed — which may be a Type 3 assessment into the flats or targeted opening up. Those conversations are easier when they happen early.

The most common reason a building is non-compliant is not disagreement about the standard — it is that the review date passed and nobody noticed. Every client's review dates go into our calendar and we prompt before they fall due, with more notice on larger portfolios so visits can be scheduled and budgeted. Where several buildings are involved we deliberately stagger the cycle so the spend and the workload spread across the year.

Reviews are priced on the same bands as a first assessment — from £99 for small single-storey premises, £149 to £349 for a two-storey block, £349 to £449 for three to six storeys, and from £449 upwards for larger buildings — because the site time is broadly the same. Where we produced the previous assessment and nothing significant has changed, the review is quicker and priced accordingly. Portfolio rates apply from the second property, and existing clients are prioritised for urgent revisits after an incident or an enforcement notice.