Fire engineering competence under the Building Safety Act
A fire statement is read by a technical consultee who knows what a competent author would have covered. How to check fire engineering competence, scope the appointment and record the decision.
Competence stopped being a matter of professional courtesy when Planning Gateway One came into force. Fire engineer competence under the Building Safety Act framework is now something a local planning authority and the Health and Safety Executive will look at on the face of the application, because Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires a fire statement for applications involving a relevant building, and the statement has to say who prepared it and on what basis they are competent to do so. A statement signed by someone without demonstrable fire engineering competence is the kind of defect that generates a consultee objection rather than a request for clarification.
Why competence became a legal question
The Building Safety Act 2022 built a three-gateway regime around higher-risk buildings. Gateway One sits at planning stage, Gateway Two at building control approval before construction starts, and Gateway Three at completion. The Building Safety Regulator, within the Health and Safety Executive, is the statutory consultee at Gateway One and the building control authority for higher-risk buildings thereafter.
Running alongside the gateways is a competence framework. The Act and the standards that support it put the burden on the duty holder to appoint people who are competent for the work they are doing, and competence means skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours rather than holding a particular certificate.
For planning purposes the practical consequence is narrow and clear. The fire statement is a technical document assessed by a technical consultee, and the consultee reads it knowing what a competent author would have covered.
What the framework expects of a fire statement author
A Fire Statement at Gateway One addresses the matters the form requires: the principles applied to the design, access and water supplies for firefighting, the site layout and the space around the building, the means of escape strategy in outline, external wall construction in principle, and the arrangements for ongoing maintenance.
An author competent to write that needs to understand fire engineering design, the relevant standards and the interaction between the fire strategy and the architectural layout at an early stage. They also need to understand what Gateway One is for, which is to get the fire safety principles embedded while the design can still change rather than to produce a final strategy.
What the consultee looks for in the author's declaration: the individual's name rather than a firm's, their professional qualifications and memberships with grades, their relevant experience by building type and height, and confirmation that they have applied the relevant standards. A statement prepared by an architect with no fire engineering input, or by a fire risk assessor whose experience is in existing building assessments rather than design, reads as a competence gap even where the content looks tidy.
This is one of the report types where a professional is legally required rather than recommended: the fire statement needs to be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence, so an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that engineer and not a substitute for them.
Membership grades and chartered status
There is no single licence to practise, so the signals come from institute membership and engineering registration, and they mean different things.
The Institution of Fire Engineers operates graded membership, with corporate grades requiring assessed knowledge and experience, and it also operates registers of professionals in defined areas of practice. Engineering Council registration through an institution gives Chartered Engineer, Incorporated Engineer or Engineering Technician status, which attests to engineering competence at a level but is discipline-neutral unless the registration route was in fire.
| Signal | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Corporate membership of the fire engineering institution | Assessed knowledge and experience in fire engineering |
| Chartered Engineer status obtained through a fire route | Engineering competence plus fire discipline |
| Chartered Engineer in another discipline alone | Engineering competence, not fire competence |
| Fire risk assessor register entry | Competence in assessing existing buildings, which is different work |
| Degree in fire engineering with limited project experience | Knowledge without the experience element |
Read the pairing rather than any single item. An engineer with corporate institute membership, chartered status and a decade of residential high-rise design work is the straightforward answer. An impressive set of letters in an unrelated discipline is not.
The overarching built environment competence framework published as a British Standard sets out the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours approach that the sector now uses, and asking a candidate how they evidence their competence against it is a fair question at appointment.
Scope of a planning stage appointment
Appointments go wrong on scope more often than on competence, so write the scope down.
A Gateway One appointment should cover review of the emerging design against fire safety principles, advice on site layout and firefighting access and water supplies, preparation of the fire statement, response to the consultee's comments during determination, and attendance at design team meetings at defined points.
What sits outside it, and should be priced separately or deliberately excluded: the full fire strategy for Gateway Two, smoke control modelling, evacuation modelling, external wall fire performance assessment, and any post-permission redesign work arising from a change of approach.
The item most often missed is responding to the consultee. A Gateway One consultation can generate detailed comments, and an appointment that ends at submission leaves you without the author at the moment you need them.
Where a consultant has to be changed part way through a live application, the handover risk in a technical document of this kind is significant, and the practicalities are set out in changing consultant mid planning application.
Carrying competence through to Gateway Two
The planning stage statement is a principles document. The Gateway Two submission needs a developed fire strategy, and the two have to be consistent.
The sensible arrangement is continuity of authorship, or at least a documented handover where the Gateway Two designer reviews and adopts the Gateway One principles. Where a different practice takes over, expect them to want to revisit assumptions, and expect that to cost design time if the principles were loosely expressed.
Two drafting decisions at Gateway One make the later stage easier. State the principles as outcomes rather than as specific products, so that detailed design has room to move. And record the assumptions explicitly, particularly on building height measurement, storey counts, firefighting access distances and the water supply available, because those are the inputs that get tested later.
A Fire Safety Strategy prepared to the relevant residential or general fire safety design standard is the Gateway Two level document, and it is squarely fire engineering work.
Checking relevant building type experience
Experience is building-type specific and this is where a reference check earns its keep.
Ask for three projects of the same building type and comparable height, with the role the individual personally performed on each. Ask whether any of them went through Gateway One and what the consultee's comments were. Ask what happened at Gateway Two, because a Gateway One statement that unravelled at Gateway Two is the most informative thing you can learn about an author.
Also ask about the mix. Residential above commercial, student accommodation, care settings and buildings with complex evacuation strategies each raise different issues, and an engineer whose work is all simple residential may be out of their depth on a mixed-use podium scheme.
A reviewer found through the professional directory can also look over a draft before it goes in, which costs far less than a consultee objection.
Documenting the appointment decision
Keep a short record, because the duty holder regime expects appointments to be justified rather than assumed.
- The scope of the appointment as issued, and the fee basis.
- The individual named as author, with their qualifications, memberships and grades.
- The relevant project experience relied on, with building types and heights.
- The standards the author confirmed they would apply.
- Any limitations or exclusions the author stated.
- The date and the person within your organisation who made the appointment.
That file takes twenty minutes to assemble and answers the competence question in one page if anyone asks later, including at Gateway Two when a different set of duty holders inherits the project.
This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.
PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.
Frequently asked questions
Who can prepare a fire statement at Planning Gateway One?
Someone with the necessary fire engineering competence for the building in question. There is no single licence, so the signals are corporate membership of the fire engineering institution, engineering registration obtained through a fire route, and relevant experience by building type and height. The statement should name the individual, not just the firm.
Which buildings need a fire statement?
Applications involving a relevant building under Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, broadly buildings containing two or more dwellings or educational accommodation that meet the height and storey criteria in the regime. Check the current definition, because the thresholds and scope have been amended since Gateway One began.
Does Chartered Engineer status mean someone is competent in fire?
Not on its own. Engineering Council registration attests to engineering competence at a level but is discipline-neutral unless the registration route was in fire engineering. Read the pairing of institute membership, registration route and project experience together rather than taking any single credential as the answer.
What should a Gateway One appointment cover?
Review of the emerging design against fire safety principles, advice on site layout, firefighting access and water supplies, preparation of the statement, response to consultee comments during determination, and attendance at design team meetings. Responding to the consultee is the item most often left out and most often needed.
Should the same engineer do Gateway One and Gateway Two?
Continuity is easier and usually cheaper. Where a different practice takes over, document the handover and expect the new author to revisit assumptions. Expressing the Gateway One principles as outcomes rather than specific products, and recording assumptions on height, access and water supply, limits the rework.
Sources and further reading
This article is general guidance about the planning system in England and, where stated, the rest of the UK. It is not legal or professional advice. Check your local planning authority’s validation requirements and take professional advice for your specific site.