Fire Risk Assessment: When to Refresh Yours
Your fire risk assessment is not a one-off document. Here is when the law expects you to revisit it, and what a good refresh actually covers.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires every non-domestic premises to have a fire risk assessment and to keep it under review. For licensed venues that means a written document, signed and dated, with a clear schedule for when it gets looked at again.
A venue without a current fire risk assessment is operating illegally. A venue with a two-year-old assessment and no record of review is operating illegally in practice even if nobody has caught it yet.
When to refresh
The law says "as often as necessary". In plain English, that means at least once a year and any time the venue changes materially.
Annual review
Every 12 months, at minimum. A scheduled review, signed and dated, even if nothing has changed.
Event-driven review
Before the annual review, any of these triggers a fresh assessment:
- Layout changes: new bar, removed wall, refurbishment, temporary marquee
- Capacity changes: new licence condition, change of use
- Incident: any fire, near-miss, evacuation, or alarm activation
- Equipment changes: new electrical installation, new heating, new gas work
- Personnel changes: new responsible person, major staff turnover, new fire marshals
Regulatory change
When national or local fire safety regulations update, assessments must be checked against the new standard. Martyn's Law, the Building Safety Act 2022, and local fire authority guidance all create review triggers.
What a good refresh covers
A fire risk assessment refresh is not a blank-slate rewrite. It is a structured review of the existing document against current conditions.
1. Walk the premises against the plan
The assessment has a building plan with exits, equipment locations, assembly points. Walk each marked item. Confirm it matches reality.
Common findings:
- Exit routes now blocked by furniture
- Extinguishers missing or moved
- Signage faded or removed
- New storage areas not on the plan
- Electrical installations changed since last review
Anything different gets flagged for follow-up.
2. Review the hazard list
The assessment lists the hazards present. Are they still the same?
New hazards that appear over time:
- Cable runs from temporary equipment
- Storage of flammable stock (candles, solvents, decorations)
- Changed kitchen layout or new food preparation
- Ducting and ventilation changes
Removed hazards should be documented as removed.
3. Test the assumptions
The assessment made assumptions about staff numbers, customer numbers, evacuation time. Are they still accurate?
A venue that was assessed at 150 capacity but now trades at 220 has a different fire risk profile. Same building, different load, different risk.
4. Review the findings
Previous actions should have been completed. Go through the action list. Tick off what has been done. Flag what has slipped.
5. Update the plan
The assessment document itself gets updated, dated, signed by the responsible person.
The responsible person
Every fire risk assessment names a responsible person - usually the employer, the owner, or the designated person in control. That person is legally liable.
When a responsible person changes (new manager, new owner, staff departure), the assessment needs updating to name the new responsible person. Not doing so leaves an employment or ownership gap the fire authority will notice.
What "signed and dated" actually means
A fire risk assessment has to be recorded. For most licensed premises it should be:
- Written (not a verbal arrangement)
- Dated (with a specific day, not "2024")
- Signed by the responsible person
- Reviewed annually with a new date
- Available to any enforcing officer on request
If your assessment is a Word document on someone's laptop with no signature page, it is not a compliant document.
Getting professional help
Most licensed premises benefit from a professional fire risk assessor for the initial assessment and any major review. Certified assessors (look for IFSM, IFE, or NEBOSH qualifications) bring the judgement that a template cannot replace.
Budget: expect £300-800 for a small to mid-size venue, more for complex or multi-level premises. Annual refreshes by the same assessor are typically cheaper.
Keeping the record
Five years of fire risk assessments, signed and dated, stored centrally, is the standard. Previous versions matter - they show continuity of review.
Paper in a binder works. Digital with version history works better. The critical thing is that when a fire authority asks for your assessment history, you can produce five years in 15 minutes.
Common pitfalls
- "We do one every year". The schedule is not the same as the assessment. A schedule without actual assessments completed is an aspiration.
- Copy and paste updates. A refresh that changes the date and nothing else is not a refresh.
- No actions. An assessment with no findings is rare for a working venue. Findings, with due dates and completion evidence, are what the document is for.
- Separate from operations. A fire risk assessment disconnected from your day-to-day compliance record is a siloed document. When it lives alongside your incident logs, pre-shift checks, and staff training records, it works harder.
Holocron stores fire risk assessments alongside your other compliance documents. Annual review reminders fire automatically. Triggered reviews are created from incident logs, layout changes, and capacity updates. Everything exports together for any enforcing authority.