Failed Your Fire Risk Assessment? Exactly What to Do Next — and What It Costs

There's no F on an FRA

The Fire Safety Order 2005 makes the responsible person — employer, building owner, landlord of the common parts — carry out a suitable assessment and then act on its significant findings. The assessor's output is an action plan, usually rated high/medium/low or with timescales. A 'failed' FRA is one with a stack of high-priority items, and the legal exposure isn't the list itself: it's the list sitting in a drawer while the dates age.

So the goal isn't a clean sheet by Friday. It's visible, recorded progress in priority order — which is also exactly what a fire authority auditor asks to see.

Triage the action plan

• Life-safety items first: anything touching the alarm system, escape routes, or fire doors on stairways moves this week, not this quarter
• Cheap fixes immediately: signage, propped-open doors, storage in escape routes — cost nothing and show intent
• Capital items get scheduled with evidence: quotes on file, order dates, completion targets — a dated programme is itself compliance
• Record everything against the FRA's item numbers: invoice, photo, date. The paper trail is half the point
• When the works finish, have the assessment reviewed so the record shows items closed, not just money spent

The enforcement ladder, honestly

Most premises never meet it, but it runs: informal advice from the fire authority, then an improvement notice with a compliance date (21 days or more), then — for serious or ignored risk — enforcement and prohibition notices, then prosecution, where fines are unlimited and individuals can carry liability. Audits get triggered by complaints, incidents, licensing visits and, in residential blocks, the paper trail the 2022 regulations now generate every quarter.

Every rung of that ladder is answered the same way: the plan, the invoices, the dates. An auditor who sees high-priority items closed within weeks and a programme for the rest almost always leaves it at advice.

What the remedial works cost

The usual suspects on an FRA action plan, at our standard retail rates, +VAT:

One contractor across the whole plan

FRA action plans sprawl across trades — doors, compartmentation, alarms, lighting — and chasing four contractors is how items stay open for a year. We deliver the passive and active items as one programme: one schedule, one evidence pack keyed to the FRA's numbering, one point of blame if a date slips. Recent work in exactly this shape includes fire-stopping programmes on a hospital site and door remediation across school estates.

If the plan includes items we don't self-deliver, we say so and sequence around them rather than absorbing them badly.

No current FRA at all?

If you're reading this because a landlord, insurer or licensing officer asked for an FRA you don't have: virtually every non-domestic premises and the common parts of every block of flats legally needs one, reviewed regularly. £650 for commercial premises, £175 for a small residential block, delivered as a written report with the action plan structured the way this page assumes. What the types mean and how to choose an assessor are both covered in our guides.

Related guides

• Types of fire risk assessment
• Choosing a fire risk assessor
• Failed a fire door inspection? What happens next