How Often Should a Fire Risk Assessment Be Reviewed?

The cycle, risk-profiled

The legal text (Order article 9) requires review 'regularly so as to keep it up to date' and upon material change — the table is the profession's working translation (PAS 79's review logic), enforced through what inspectors ask: 'when, and what changed since?'

The triggers that outrank calendars

• Building works: extensions, refits, layout changes — compartment lines and escape routes move (the fit-out compliance warnings from the office guides); review before reoccupation, not eventually
• Use/occupancy change: new sleeping risk, public access, headcount jumps, vulnerable occupants — the assessment's people-half rewritten (office-to-resi conversions being the extreme case)
• Systems change: new alarm categories, suppression, AOV alterations — precautions changed, assessment follows (the commissioning-documents-feed-FRA loop)
• Incidents and near-misses: fires however small, evacuation failures, false-alarm patterns (the audit-trigger overlap) — events are data the assessment must absorb
• Enforcement/insurer contact: findings and requirements integrating formally
• External knowledge shifts: post-Grenfell guidance waves being the era's example — sector learnings re-framing assumptions (cladding, doors, evacuation strategies per those guides)

Reviews vs reassessments, and records

The instruments distinguished (buying clarity again): a review confirms currency — premises walked against the existing assessment, changes noted, action-plan progress checked (£100–£300 typical, often within service relationships per the small-business budget); a reassessment re-performs the discipline (the full FRA product at its bands). Drift between them is the failure mode: decade-old assessments 'reviewed' annually into fiction — reviewers noting changes the document never absorbs (re-assessment triggers ignored in writing, the worst record to leave). Records expectations: review entries dated with findings (even 'no material change' — evidenced currency being the point per the recorded-FRA law), reassessments versioned with change logs, action plans living documents (completion evidence attached — the file's beating heart). The relationship model serves here above all: assessors holding your triggers (notified of works, incidents, changes through the service rhythm — our package clients' default) review meaningfully where transactional paper ages silently. Currency is the compliance — the date on the cover is just its symptom.