Fire safety information at the point of occupation

The planning system's involvement in fire safety ends at the decision. The duties that matter once people move in sit under the Building Regulations, the fire safety order and, for taller residential buildings, the Building Safety Act framework. For a landlord or an investor buying a newly completed block, the practical question is what package of fire safety information must be handed over at occupation, and who becomes legally responsible for keeping it current.

Get the handover wrong and you inherit a building you cannot demonstrate is safe. That is a letting problem, a lending problem and an enforcement problem at the same time.

What must be handed over and to whom

Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations 2010 requires fire safety information to be given to the responsible person at completion, or when the building or extension is first occupied if that comes earlier. It applies to buildings where the fire safety order will apply, which covers the common parts of residential blocks as well as commercial buildings.

The regulation does not publish a tick list, and the content is expected to be proportionate to the building. In practice a defensible package contains the following.

• The as-built fire strategy, with the design assumptions stated and any fire engineered departures identified.
• Drawings showing compartment lines, protected routes, cavity barriers, fire doors with their ratings, and the location of fire stopping.
• Details of the detection and alarm system, its category and its commissioning records.
• Smoke control and ventilation details with commissioning and performance test results.
• Information on the external wall construction and the products used in it, with test or classification evidence.
• Operation and maintenance details for every fire safety system, with the inspection intervals the manufacturer requires.
• Records of fire stopping inspections, ideally photographic and located on a plan.

The responsible person is the recipient. On a block of flats that is normally the freeholder or the management company, and on a commercial building the employer or whoever has control of the premises.

The duties that begin at occupation

Three regimes overlap from the day the building is occupied.

The fire safety order requires the responsible person to carry out and keep up to date a fire risk assessment of the common parts, and subsequent legislation confirmed that the external walls and flat entrance doors are within its scope. This is the duty most often found to have been discharged with a generic document produced without the regulation 38 information.

The fire safety regulations made in 2022 added specific duties in multi-occupied residential buildings, graduated by height. Above 11 metres there are periodic checks of fire doors in the common parts and annual checks of flat entrance doors. In high-rise residential buildings there are monthly checks of lifts and firefighting equipment, floor plans and a building plan provided to the fire and rescue service, a secure information box, wayfinding signage visible in low light, and information to residents about the external wall system.

For a higher-risk building, which is one of at least 18 metres or seven storeys with two or more residential units, the Building Safety Act regime adds registration with the regulator, an accountable person and a principal accountable person, a safety case report, mandatory occurrence reporting and a residents' engagement strategy.

Records created during design and construction

For a higher-risk building the information is expected to be assembled progressively rather than compiled at the end. The golden thread concept means a single, accurate, accessible set of information about the building and the reasoning behind its fire and structural safety, maintained digitally and handed on through each change of ownership.

That has a practical consequence for anyone buying off plan. The seller either has that record or does not, and assembling it retrospectively from subcontractors who have left site is slow and expensive.

For buildings outside the higher-risk category the duty is less prescriptive. The evidence still has to exist, because a fire risk assessor cannot verify compartmentation that nobody recorded before the ceilings went up.

Interaction with planning conditions on management

Planning conditions rarely control fire safety management, and where they appear to, they are usually doing something else. A condition requiring a construction management plan deals with the building phase. A condition requiring details of a sprinkler installation is unusual and, where it exists, sits awkwardly alongside building control.

The planning system's substantive fire input happens earlier, through the fire statement submitted at the application stage for relevant buildings under the development management procedure order and the Gateway One process. A Fire Statement is required at Planning Gateway One for relevant buildings and must be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence. The same applies to a Fire Safety Strategy, which is a fire engineering document. A PlanScope draft of either is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute, and qualified professional input is legally required.

Where a building sits just under a threshold, the evidence expected is different, and our note on building just below the threshold covers that position.

Responsible person duties under the fire safety regime

The responsible person must identify themselves, which sounds trivial and frequently is not. On a block with a freeholder, a head lessee, a managing agent and a residents' management company, more than one party can hold duties over different parts, and the regulations require responsible persons to cooperate and to identify themselves to each other.

The duty is continuing. A fire risk assessment is not an annual document to file; it has to be reviewed when the building changes, when an incident occurs, or when new information about a product or a system emerges. Replacing a set of flat entrance doors, converting a bin store, or installing electric vehicle charging in an undercroft car park are all triggers.

Keep the evidence of the checks. Enforcement interest in these regimes concentrates on whether the record exists, because an undocumented check is treated as a check that did not happen.

What a purchaser should ask for

Before exchange, ask for the regulation 38 package, the current fire risk assessment with the assessor's competence stated, the as-built fire strategy, commissioning certificates for detection, alarm and smoke control, external wall construction details with test evidence, the completion certificate from the relevant building control route, and confirmation of registration where the building is higher risk.

Then ask the awkward questions. Who is the responsible person today. Which parts of the building does each duty holder control. When was the last fire door check and where is the record. Has any element been substituted during construction, and if so, where is the revised assessment. Where a scheme involves habitable rooms below ground, the egress position needs checking against the as-built arrangement rather than the consented drawings.

A missing document is not fatal. A missing document that nobody can reconstruct is.

Keeping the information current

Set up the record so that it survives a change of managing agent. One location, version controlled, with the fire strategy and the compartmentation drawings as the anchor documents and every subsequent alteration recorded against them.

And treat each refurbishment as an event that updates the record rather than one that sits outside it. Most compartmentation failures found in older blocks were created by later works carried out by people who never saw the fire strategy.

Draft a Fire Statement on PlanScope and send it to a qualified fire engineer for review before you submit.

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.