Fire Risk Assessment Cost: What Changes the Price and What You Should Get

What actually moves the price?

Time on site and time writing up. Everything below changes one or the other.

• Size and floors. More floor area means more rooms to walk, more doors and more escape routes to check. Each extra floor adds a stair and a landing to inspect.
• Sleeping risk. Hotels, care homes, HMOs and flats take longer and need a deeper look at alarm coverage, escape from bedrooms and compartmentation. The consequences of a fault are higher, so the assessment is slower.
• Complexity. Open plan retail is quick. A building of small offices, plant rooms, loft spaces and a basement is not.
• Plans available. If you have floor plans and a previous assessment, we use them. If not, we mark up a plan on site, and that takes extra time.
• Multiple buildings. A site with several units costs more than one, though not in a straight line. Time spent finding the way around is shared.
• Occupancy and use. Storage of flammable stock, cooking, public access and shift working all add things to assess.

We do not publish a price list by size, because two buildings of the same floor area can need very different amounts of time. Send us the address, number of floors and what the building is used for, and we confirm a fixed price.

Why some fire risk assessments are very cheap

If a quote is a fraction of the others, find out what is missing.

The cheapest options are usually an online form you fill in yourself, or a visit of under an hour. The paperwork may look like an assessment. It often leaves out the parts that take the time:

• No one checks the doors, so a wedged or non-compliant fire door goes unrecorded
• Alarm and emergency lighting are noted as present, but no logbook or test records are looked at
• Hidden areas, such as risers, roof voids and ceiling spaces, are not mentioned at all
• Actions are generic text, not tied to a location, with no ranking by priority
• No photographs, so you cannot show an insurer or enforcing authority what was seen
• The person who signs it has never been in the building

The assessment is a legal duty under article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and the responsible person stays liable for it. A report that would not stand up if the fire service asked questions has not discharged that duty. Our page on failed fire risk assessments shows what usually goes wrong.

What you receive for the price

A written report you can act on and show to someone else.

• A report written in the style of PAS 79-1, covering fire hazards, people at risk, escape routes, detection and warning, emergency lighting, signage, extinguishers, compartmentation and management
• An action plan ranked by priority, each action tied to a location
• Photographs of the issues found, so you can see what we saw
• A short summary at the front for the person who signs it off
• Notes on anything we could not see, such as hidden voids, with a recommendation for a survey

The assessment is led by Sebastian Grabowski, who holds the Level 4 Diploma in Fire Risk Assessment. You can read how we go about it on our fire risk assessments page, and how to pick an assessor on choosing a fire risk assessor.

How long does it take?

Longer than most people expect, and the report takes a similar time again.

A small shop or office is usually a couple of hours on site. A larger building is a day or more. The write-up, with photos and a ranked action plan, is done after the visit. If a quote promises a finished report before the assessor has left the car park, ask what it is based on.

Access matters as much as size. If keys to riser cupboards and plant rooms are on site and someone who knows the building can walk round with us, the visit is shorter.

How often does it need doing again?

The law says keep it under review. In practice that means a fixed annual check and a new look when something changes.

There is no fixed legal interval. Most premises review annually and redo the full assessment when the building, the layout or the use changes. A new tenant, a refit, a change in the number of people or a fire are all triggers. Our guide on how often to review a fire risk assessment has the detail.

If you want a template to start your own records, we have a free fire risk assessment template. It helps you organise what you know. It does not replace an assessment by a competent person.

A fire risk assessment is not a fire door inspection

They are two separate services and one does not cover the other.

The assessment looks at the whole building and can note that fire doors look damaged or wedged open. It does not measure gaps, check hinges, inspect seals or report on each door. That is a fire door inspection. They sit side by side, and many clients book both. The same goes for a fire stopping survey for hidden gaps in fire walls, and fire alarm testing for the system itself.

Sources

• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Fire safety in the workplace: your responsibilities (GOV.UK)

Updated October 2026 by Sebastian Grabowski, DC Fire & Security, 2 Winsdon Court, Luton LU1 5LZ.