It's one of the most common questions asked by business owners, landlords, and facilities managers across the UK. The honest answer is: legally, yes, in principle — but the law puts one word between you and a valid assessment, and that word carries far more weight than most people realise. That word is "competent."

What the Law Actually Requires

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the "responsible person" for a premises — typically the employer, owner, or whoever has control of the building — must either carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment themselves, or appoint a competent person to carry it out on their behalf. The law doesn't insist on a professional every time. What it insists on is competence, wherever that competence sits.

Since 2023, the requirements around this have tightened considerably. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act, which came into force on 1 October 2023, requires the assessment to be recorded in full, including all findings, along with the fire safety arrangements for the premises — a duty that previously only applied to larger employers, now extended to businesses of every size. At the same time, the level of fines for related offences was increased from £1,000 to unlimited, a clear signal of how seriously enforcement is now treated.

There's also a specific legal test for competence built into the Act: a competent person is someone with enough training and experience, or knowledge and other qualities, to properly assist in carrying out fire safety duties. A separate provision of the Building Safety Act goes further still, stating that anyone appointed to make or review an assessment on your behalf must be competent — though this specific clause was not brought into force alongside the rest of the 2023 changes, pending further guidance. Government advice in the meantime has been for responsible persons to satisfy themselves that anyone carrying out an assessment on their behalf has appropriate qualifications or works for a suitably accredited organisation, treating the intent of the law as already in effect even where the formal commencement date hasn't landed.

Adding further weight to this, a new British Standard — BS 8674:2025, published in August 2025, establishes a formal competency framework for fire risk assessors across Foundation, Intermediate, and Advanced levels, giving the industry a much clearer benchmark for what "competent" should actually mean in practice.

So Can You Do It Yourself?

For some premises, yes — provided you're genuinely competent to do so (Experienced, qualified, knowledge etc). A small, single-occupancy office or retail unit, with no sleeping accommodation, no vulnerable occupants, and no unusual fire loads or processes, is the kind of environment where a diligent owner-manager, using the free government guides and a structured methodology, can often produce an assessment that holds up.

The trouble is that the legal test isn't whether you completed a checklist. It's whether the assessment was "suitable and sufficient" — and that judgement is almost always made with hindsight, usually by a fire inspector during an audit, or by a court after something has already gone wrong. A generic template filled in without real understanding of how fire behaves in your specific building, how your specific occupants would evacuate, or how your specific processes create risk, rarely survives that kind of scrutiny.

If You Do Go It Alone, Do It Properly

A DIY assessment carried out to a recognised methodology stands a far better chance of being judged suitable and sufficient than one improvised from memory. In practice, that means working through five distinct stages, each done thoroughly rather than rushed:

1. Identify the fire hazards — sources of ignition, fuel, and oxygen present in the premises, not just the obvious ones.

2. Identify who's at risk — staff, visitors, contractors, and anyone with a disability, illness, or unfamiliarity with the building that could slow their escape.

3. Evaluate, remove, or reduce the risks — deciding what precautions are genuinely needed, not simply copying a generic list of measures that may not fit your building.

4. Record your findings, prepare an emergency plan, and provide training — this is now a legal requirement for every responsible person, regardless of size, not just an optional extra.

5. Review regularly — after any significant change to the building, its use, or its occupants, and at least annually even without one.

   
   

Competence shows up most clearly in stages one and three — spotting hazards that aren't written on any generic template, and making a genuinely informed judgement about what's proportionate for your specific building. That's the part a checklist can prompt you to think about, but can't do for you.

Where Competence and Experience Start to Matter

The more complex or higher-risk the premises, the harder it becomes to argue that a DIY assessment meets the bar the law sets. This includes:

• Multi-occupied or high-rise residential buildings

• Premises with sleeping accommodation, such as care homes, hotels, or HMOs

• Buildings with vulnerable occupants who may need assistance to evacuate

• Licensed venues, industrial sites, or premises with unusual fuel loads or processes

• Listed or heritage buildings with non-standard construction

• Sites undergoing construction, refurbishment, or recent structural change

This is exactly the territory where genuine industry experience earns its keep. An experienced assessor has usually seen the failure mode before — the fire door that's been wedged open for years, the storage arrangement that's quietly compromised a means of escape, the interaction between an old building's original construction and a newer alteration that nobody flagged as a compartmentation risk. These are rarely things a first-time assessor spots from a checklist alone, however carefully it's followed.

Since the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, the direction of travel has been unmistakable. A key outcome of the Inquiry's Phase 2 report was that fire risk assessors should be able to prove their competence through a UKAS-accredited certification body, assessed against recognised standards. Notably, an older scheme, FRACS, has since closed with all its certificates withdrawn, which is a useful reminder that even assessors who hold what looks like a credential should have that credential checked for currency.

The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong

Three separate risks stack up when a fire risk assessment turns out not to be suitable and sufficient.

The legal risk is real and personal — the responsible person carries the liability, not an anonymous "the business," and with fines now unlimited, the financial exposure has changed considerably since the £1,000 cap era. The insurance risk follows close behind: a policy can be challenged or voided if an insurer determines that fire safety arrangements weren't properly assessed. But the risk that actually matters is the one underneath both of those — a fire risk assessment is one of the few compliance documents in business where getting it wrong can genuinely cost lives, not just money.

A Simple Way to Decide

Ask yourself honestly:

• Is the premises single-occupancy, low-complexity, with no sleeping risk?

• Are there no vulnerable occupants who would need assistance to evacuate?

• Are there no unusual processes, fuel loads, or recent structural changes?

• Do you have the time and genuine working knowledge to review this properly, not just once, but on an ongoing basis?

If the answer to all of these is yes, a well-structured DIY assessment, reviewed regularly, may reasonably meet your legal duty. If any answer is no — or if you're genuinely unsure — that uncertainty is itself useful information. It's usually the point at which bringing in a competent, experienced professional stops being a nice-to-have and starts being the sensible, lower-risk option.

What to Look for in a Competent Assessor

If you decide the assessment belongs with a professional rather than in-house, worth checking for:

• Third-party accreditation such as BAFE SP205, a UKAS-accredited scheme specifically for fire risk assessment

• Registration with a recognised professional body, such as the Institution of Fire Engineers' Fire Risk Assessors register, or the Institution of Fire Safety Managers

• A recognised fire safety qualification, typically starting with the NEBOSH National Certificate in Fire Safety, backed by demonstrable, hands-on experience

• Experience specifically with premises similar to yours in use, complexity, and occupant profile

• Appropriate professional indemnity and public liability insurance

The Bottom Line

The law leaves room for you to carry out your own fire risk assessment — it doesn't insist on a professional in every case. But it sets the bar at "suitable and sufficient," judged after the fact, and backed by unlimited fines where it falls short. For simple, low-risk premises, genuine competence and careful, regular review can be enough. For anything more complex, the depth of judgement that comes from real industry experience — spotting the risks a generic checklist was never designed to catch — is what actually keeps people safe, and what keeps a responsible person on the right side of the law.

If you'd rather hand that judgement call to someone who does it every day, that's exactly the kind of support a retained health and safety partner like LESH Consulting is there to provide.

info@leshonline.co.uk

01623 239705

Also see our H&S Support Packages which can include your annual fire risk assessment