Fire regulations for holiday lets in England come from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, as amended by the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. Since 1 October 2023 the responsible person for a holiday let — usually the owner — must record the fire risk assessment in writing regardless of the size of the property or the number of guests. The assessment must identify the hazards, the people at risk and the precautions needed, be reviewed regularly, and be produced on request to the local fire and rescue authority.
A holiday let is not treated as a private home. The moment you take payment for people to stay, the property becomes premises used in connection with a business, and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to it. This surprises a great many owners, particularly those letting a second home or an annexe a few weeks a year, because nothing about the building has changed — but the legal category has. The Order is enforced by the local fire and rescue authority, not by a council's housing team and not by the booking platform, and it applies equally to a cottage let through an agency, a flat listed on Airbnb, and a room let directly to guests. Sitting alongside it are the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, which mainly concern blocks of flats but reach short-stay units inside them, and general health and safety duties covering gas, electricity and carbon monoxide.
What changed on 1 October 2023
This is the change most holiday let owners have still not heard about. Before that date, Article 9 of the Fire Safety Order only required the significant findings of an assessment to be recorded in writing where the responsible person employed five or more people, or where a licence or an alterations notice was in force. Very small operations could, in principle, hold the assessment in their head. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 removed that exemption entirely. From 1 October 2023 every responsible person must record the significant findings of the fire risk assessment and the fire safety arrangements in writing, no matter how small the premises or how few people are employed. The Act also strengthened the requirement to record who the responsible person is and to hand information over when premises change hands. For a single-cottage owner the practical effect is simple and absolute: an unwritten assessment is now a breach, and 'the property is only small' is no longer an answer.
Written record of the significant findings — mandatory for all premises
Written record of the fire safety arrangements — mandatory for all premises
Responsible person's identity and contact details recorded
Information handed to an incoming responsible person on sale or transfer
Stronger evidential weight given to guidance in enforcement proceedings
Who is the responsible person?
The Order defines the responsible person as whoever has control of the premises in connection with a business. For most holiday lets that is the owner, and it stays the owner even where a cleaner, a changeover service or a local agent does the day-to-day work. Where a full management company takes control of the letting, bookings, maintenance and contractors, control — and therefore the duty — can be shared between the owner and the manager. Shared does not mean halved: each party must satisfy themselves that a suitable assessment exists and that its findings are acted on. If your property is managed, the practical step is to get in writing which of you is holding the assessment, who is fixing what, and who receives an enforcing officer's letter. Ambiguity here is what turns a small failure into an argument at the worst possible moment.
The buildings behind this advice
Detection: what alarms a holiday let needs
There is no single sentence in the legislation that says 'a holiday let must have X alarms', because the Order is risk-based: the assessment decides. In practice, for guest accommodation, assessors converge on a consistent baseline drawn from BS 5839-6 and the LACORS housing fire safety guidance, and it is a higher standard than an owner-occupied house. Guests do not know the building, are frequently asleep, and may have been drinking, so the alarm has to do work that a resident's familiarity would otherwise do.
Interlinked smoke detection on every storey of the escape route, so an alarm anywhere sounds everywhere
Mains-powered detection with battery backup rather than standalone battery units
Heat detection rather than smoke detection in the kitchen, to avoid nuisance alarms being disabled
Carbon monoxide detection in any room with a fixed combustion appliance — wood burner, open fire, gas boiler, gas hob
Detection in any inner room and in larger open-plan spaces where a fire could develop unseen
A documented test regime between guest stays, with the results recorded
Escape routes and the key-in-the-lock problem
The most common serious failure we find in short-stay properties is not exotic. It is a final exit door fitted with a key-operated deadlock, with the key on a hook, in a drawer, or in the key safe outside. Article 14 of the Order requires that emergency routes and exits can be used at all times without further assistance, and a door that needs a key a guest has never been shown does not meet that. The fix is usually a thumb-turn cylinder costing a few pounds. Beyond the exit door, the assessment looks at whether every bedroom has a route out that does not pass through a higher-risk room, whether that route is clear of storage and lit well enough to follow at night, whether inner rooms — bedrooms reached only through a living room or kitchen — are protected by detection in the access room, and whether loft conversions and basement rooms have the protection their height or depth requires. In older cottages with steep stairs and low beams the route may be legitimate but difficult, which is precisely the sort of thing a guest needs telling before they use it in the dark.
Wood burners, hot tubs and the things guests get wrong
Features that sell a holiday let are frequently the features that create its risk, and they are operated by people who have never used one before. A wood burner is the clearest example: guests overload it, burn the wrong fuel, empty warm ash into a plastic bin, leave the door open, and dry clothes on the hearth. The assessment should cover the appliance's servicing and flue sweeping records, the hearth and surrounds, a metal ash container with a lid, a spark guard, carbon monoxide detection, and written instructions in plain language rather than a laminated diagram. The same logic applies to charcoal barbecues and fire pits — never to be brought indoors or into a tent, and never stored with fuel against the building — to hot tub electrics and their RCD protection, to candles and open flames, and increasingly to e-bike and e-scooter charging, which should be outside habitable and escape areas entirely. Thatched properties, unusual layouts and detached annexes each add their own considerations.
Firefighting equipment: what is actually proportionate
Owners often over-provide extinguishers and under-provide the thing that matters. For a typical domestic-scale holiday let, a fire blanket mounted beside — not inside a cupboard near — the hob is the single most useful item, because the realistic fire is a pan fire. A single multi-purpose extinguisher near the exit is common and reasonable, but it should never be positioned so that using it means moving away from the way out, and guests should never be encouraged to fight a fire rather than leave. Larger group-accommodation properties, properties with multiple storeys, or those with commercial-scale kitchens will justify more, and the assessment will say so. Whatever is provided needs annual servicing and a record, because unmaintained equipment is a finding in its own right.
Telling guests what to do
Fire safety information is a legal element of the arrangements, not a nicety, and the welcome folder is where it goes to die. What works is a simple fire action notice displayed where guests will actually see it — by the front door, in the hallway, or inside each bedroom door — telling them in a handful of lines what the alarm sounds like, how to get out, where to assemble, and what number to call, along with the property's full address, because a panicking guest in an unfamiliar village frequently cannot tell the operator where they are. For larger properties, a short line in the check-in message and a mention during a personal handover both help. None of this costs anything, and it is the first thing an enforcing officer looks for after the alarms.
Records, reviews and what an inspector asks for
Article 9 requires the assessment to be reviewed regularly and kept up to date. There is no fixed statutory interval, but for short-stay accommodation an annual review is the defensible position because occupancy changes constantly, and an immediate review is required after any material change: a new appliance, a loft conversion, a change in the number of guests, a change of use, a fire or a near miss. Keep the whole file together and keep it somewhere you can reach from your phone, because when an officer or an insurer asks, they usually want it the same day.
The written fire risk assessment and its action plan
Alarm and detection test records between changeovers
Gas Safety Record and electrical installation condition report
Chimney sweeping and appliance servicing certificates
Extinguisher and fire blanket servicing records
A copy of the guest fire action notice as displayed
What happens if you get it wrong
Enforcement under the Fire Safety Order runs from informal advice, through an enforcement notice requiring specified works within a period, to a prohibition notice that can stop the property being let at all — which for a holiday let means cancelled bookings and refunds in the middle of a season. For serious breaches, prosecution carries an unlimited fine and up to two years' imprisonment, and prosecutions of small operators do happen. The quieter risk is insurance: a short-term let policy generally assumes a compliant property, and the absence of a current written assessment after a fire gives an insurer an obvious line of enquiry at the point you need the cover most. Set against that, an assessment on a small cottage costs from £99 and takes an hour.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
This guide describes the position in England. Scotland operates the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006, alongside a short-term let licensing scheme that requires safety evidence as a condition of the licence. Wales applies the same Fire Safety Order as England but has introduced its own statutory licensing scheme for visitor accommodation, and Welsh guidance should be read alongside the Order. Northern Ireland has its own Fire and Rescue Services Order 2006 and associated regulations. The underlying obligations are similar in substance everywhere: assess the risk, write it down, act on it, review it.
