The Fire Safety (England) Regulations and existing blocks

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 came into force on 23 January 2023 and placed duties on the responsible person for every multi-occupied residential building in England, scaled by height. If you own or manage a block, the duties are already live. The planning question is a second-order one, and it arrives when the works needed to comply change the building: a signage scheme in a listed stairwell, a secure information box on a protected facade, a new external wall system, a hardstanding for a fire appliance.

Nothing in these regulations grants planning permission, and nothing in planning law excuses non-compliance. Both sets of obligations apply at once.

What the regulations require, and of whom

The regulations were made under the Fire Safety Order 2005 and implement recommendations from the first phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. They sit on the responsible person, which in a block of flats is usually the freeholder, the right to manage company or the managing agent acting on their behalf, and the enforcing authority is the fire and rescue service rather than the local planning authority.

Every multi-occupied residential building containing two or more sets of domestic premises carries baseline duties, whatever its height. The responsible person must provide residents with fire safety instructions covering how to report a fire, what to do if one occurs and the evacuation strategy for the building, and information about fire doors, including that they should be kept shut, should not be tampered with and that faults should be reported. That information has to be given to new residents when they move in and repeated to all residents at least every 12 months.

That baseline catches a two flat conversion over a shop as well as a tower. Small landlords are routinely unaware of it.

Duties that scale with building height

Above the baseline, the duties step up at two thresholds. Buildings over 11 m in height pick up door checking duties. High-rise buildings, meaning those at least 18 m in height or with at least seven storeys, pick up the full set.

Measure the height properly before deciding which tier applies. The regulations use a defined method, and a building that looks like it is just under 18 m on a sloping site may not be. Get it surveyed rather than estimated, because the difference in obligation is substantial.

Information for the fire and rescue service

For high-rise buildings the responsible person must give the local fire and rescue service up-to-date electronic plans of each floor of the building, together with a single page plan identifying the location of key firefighting equipment and the environs of the building.

A hard copy of those plans, and a single page building plan, must then be held in a secure information box installed in the building, with the box's location agreed with the fire service.

The responsible person must also provide the fire service with information about the design and materials of the building's external wall system, and must inform them of any material changes to those walls. That last duty is the one that connects directly to remediation work: strip and replace a cladding system and you have a notification obligation as well as a planning one.

Keep the record current. Plans that show a layout altered three years ago are worse than useless to a crew arriving at night.

Wayfinding, doors and equipment checks

Three ongoing obligations generate most of the day-to-day work.

Wayfinding signage in high-rise buildings must be visible in low light or smoke conditions and must identify floor numbers and the flat numbers on each storey. In practice that means photoluminescent signs at each landing and at the head of each stair, to a legible size and in consistent positions.

Door checks run on fixed cycles. Quarterly checks of all fire doors in the common parts of buildings over 11 m, and annual checks of flat entrance doors using best endeavours, which recognises that you cannot force entry to a private flat. Record the attempts as well as the inspections, because the evidence of best endeavours is what an inspecting officer will want.

Monthly checks apply in high-rise buildings to lifts intended for use by firefighters and to other specified firefighting equipment, with faults reported to the fire service within 24 hours where they cannot be fixed within that period, and an annual report of the results. This is a maintenance regime rather than a one-off project, and it needs a contract and a log.

Where compliance works need planning permission

Most of what the regulations require is internal, and internal works are not development unless they materially affect the external appearance of the building. So signage in stairwells, door replacement in common corridors, evacuation alert systems and equipment checks raise no planning question in an ordinary block.

Five areas do need attention:

1. External wall remediation. Replacing a cladding system almost always materially affects external appearance and needs planning permission. Several authorities publish specific guidance and prioritise these applications, so ask before assuming the standard timetable.
2. Secure information boxes and fire service inlet boxes. A small box on an elevation is often treated as too minor to amount to development, but there is no blanket exemption, and the answer differs between authorities. Ask in writing.
3. Firefighting access. Creating or widening hardstanding for an appliance, removing bollards or planters, or altering a vehicular route can be development, particularly where it involves loss of landscaping secured by condition.
4. New plant and structures. A sprinkler pump room, a tank enclosure or a dry riser cabinet on the outside of the building is a new structure and should be checked against the permitted development limits for plant and equipment, which are narrow on a block of flats.
5. External escape stairs and door openings. Any new opening in an external wall, and any external stair, is development.

Where the building is over 18 m and you are also adding storeys or carrying out major works, the Building Safety Act gateways apply alongside. A fire statement is required with a planning application for a relevant building under Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, and it must be prepared by someone with the necessary fire-engineering competence. Permitted development limits for external equipment on residential buildings are tighter than people expect, a point we look at for air source heat pumps and permitted development limits.

Listed and heritage blocks

Listed post-war estates, converted warehouses and listed Georgian terraces subdivided into flats are where fire safety law and heritage law collide, and the collision is real rather than theoretical.

Internal works to a listed building need listed building consent where they affect the building's character as a building of special architectural or historic interest. That captures a great deal of fire safety work: signage fixed to original plasterwork or a stone stair, replacement of original doors with certificated fire doors, boxing in of a historic stair soffit, and the installation of detection cabling on decorative surfaces.

The statutory duty under the Listed Buildings Act requires the decision maker to have special regard to the desirability of preserving the building and its features. That does not mean fire safety loses, and authorities and Historic England have become more pragmatic about it, but it does mean the application needs a proper justification rather than a specification.

What works: a heritage statement setting out the significance of the affected fabric, the fire safety requirement driving the work, the options considered and why the chosen one causes least harm. Upgrading original doors with intumescent seals and thin intumescent paper rather than replacing them. Reversible fixings. Signage on freestanding or lightly fixed carriers rather than screwed into historic fabric.

Start that conversation with the conservation officer early. A listed block needing a full signage scheme, door upgrades and a secure information box is one application, not six, and officers prefer to see the whole programme.

A fire safety strategy prepared to the relevant British Standard is a fire-engineering document and must be prepared by a competent fire engineer, who is also the person best placed to propose the least damaging solution.

Keeping these duties separate from planning

Three distinctions worth holding onto.

The 2022 Regulations are fire safety law, enforced by the fire and rescue authority, with criminal sanctions for breach. The Building Safety Act regime for occupied higher-risk buildings, with its building assessment certificates and safety case reports, is separate again and administered by the Building Safety Regulator. And planning permission governs only whether the physical change to the building is acceptable in land use terms.

Compliance with one is not a defence to breach of another. A responsible person who installs a cladding system without planning permission has solved a fire safety problem and created an enforcement problem.

Sequence accordingly. Identify the works the regulations require, take the fire engineer's advice on options, then check the planning and heritage position on each option before committing. Reform in this area has been continuous since 2022, and the UK planning law updates timeline is one place to follow it.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; fire safety duties carry criminal liability, so take advice from a competent fire professional and, for listed buildings, from a conservation specialist.

You can browse all 66 report types to see which documents a fire safety related application usually needs. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.