Fire Risk Assessment: The Statutory Compliance Process for Care Homes

Fire safety training tells staff how to respond when an alarm sounds. A fire risk assessment is a different thing entirely — it's the formal, documented process that identifies fire hazards in the building itself and decides what needs to change to reduce the risk of a fire happening, and of it causing serious harm if it does. Every care home in England and Wales is legally required to have one, kept up to date, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and getting the process right is a core part of a care home's compliance obligations.

What a Fire Risk Assessment Actually Covers

A proper fire risk assessment identifies fire hazards (sources of ignition, fuel and oxygen), identifies who's at risk (residents, staff, visitors — with particular attention to anyone whose mobility, cognition or sensory impairment makes evacuation harder), evaluates and reduces the risk from the hazards identified, records the findings along with what actions are needed, and sets a schedule for review. In a care home specifically, this needs to go well beyond a generic office-building checklist — the assessment has to grapple seriously with the reality that many residents cannot self-evacuate quickly, or at all, without significant staff assistance.

The "Responsible Person" and Who Actually Does This

Under the legislation, a "responsible person" — usually the employer or the person in control of the premises — has the legal duty to ensure a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment is carried out. In practice this is often commissioned from a competent fire risk assessor, particularly given the complexity of assessing a care home with residents who have varying evacuation needs, but the legal responsibility for ensuring it happens, and that its findings are acted on, sits with the responsible person regardless of who physically carries it out.

From Assessment to Individual Evacuation Plans

A building-wide fire risk assessment and individual resident evacuation planning are closely connected but distinct pieces of work. The fire risk assessment looks at the building and its systems as a whole; from its findings, and from each resident's specific needs, individual Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) are developed, as covered in our guide to fire evacuation and PEEPs for care home residents. A fire risk assessment that hasn't been updated recently can leave PEEPs built on outdated assumptions about the building's layout or fire systems, which is one reason the two need to be kept in step with each other.

Keeping It Current, Not Just Completed

A fire risk assessment isn't a one-off document to file away once finished. It needs to be reviewed regularly — and immediately after any significant change, such as building alterations, a change in the resident population's mobility or dependency levels, a near-miss fire incident, or new fire safety equipment being installed. An assessment that no longer reflects the building or the residents currently living in it provides false reassurance rather than genuine protection, and inspectors and fire authorities will look specifically for evidence that the assessment has actually been kept current, not just that one exists somewhere in a folder.

Common Gaps Found in Practice

Fire risk assessments in care settings most commonly fall down on: PEEPs that haven't been updated to match a resident's current mobility or cognitive status; storage of flammable materials or clutter in escape routes; fire doors that have been wedged open for convenience, defeating their purpose entirely; and staff who know the theory of the evacuation plan but haven't practised it enough to respond confidently and quickly under real pressure. Regular fire drills, and genuinely reviewing what went wrong or was slow during them, close this gap far more effectively than paperwork alone.

What Happens During a Fire Authority Inspection

Local fire and rescue authorities have powers to inspect care homes and enforce compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, separately from CQC's own regulatory role. An inspector will typically want to see the current fire risk assessment itself, evidence that identified actions have actually been completed rather than just noted, fire drill records, and staff who can speak confidently about the evacuation plan for their own area of the building. A home that treats the fire risk assessment as a living document, reviewed and acted on continuously, will find this kind of inspection far less stressful than one that only reaches for the file when an inspector is at the door.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often does a fire risk assessment need to be reviewed? There's no fixed legal interval, but it should be reviewed regularly and without delay whenever there's a significant change to the building, the residents, or after any fire-related incident or near miss.

Who is legally responsible if the fire risk assessment is inadequate? The "responsible person" under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — typically the employer or the person in control of the premises — holds the legal duty, even where the physical assessment was carried out by an external assessor.

Is a fire risk assessment the same as a PEEP? No — the fire risk assessment covers the building and systems as a whole; PEEPs are individual evacuation plans built from that assessment and each resident's specific needs.

A fire risk assessment that's genuinely current, and genuinely acted on, is one of the most important documents a care home holds. Learnsignal's CPD courses for care staff cover fire safety and emergency planning as part of a wider compliance programme.