How to Check a Fire Door in 5 Steps

The five-step check in detail

• Certification: top edge or hinge edge should carry a label, plug or stamp (BWF-Certifire, FIRAS, BM TRADA). No marking doesn't prove it isn't a fire door — but means nobody can prove it is
• Gaps: 2–4mm between door and frame on the sides and top (a £1 coin is roughly 3mm — it should sit snugly); under-door gap up to 8mm (10mm with smoke seals fitted is too much)
• Seals: intumescent strips (and brush/fin smoke seals where fitted) continuous in their grooves, not painted, snapped or missing sections
• Hinges: three hinges minimum, CE/UKCA-marked, all screws present and tight, no metal fragments or oil leakage
• Closing: open to 5° and from halfway — the closer must swing it fully shut, engaging any latch, without sticking on the floor or frame

What failure looks like in real buildings

The defects we find weekly: doors planed down for new carpets leaving 10mm+ bottom gaps; strips painted over during redecoration (paint stops them expanding); closers disconnected because a door 'kept slamming'; hinge screws missing or replaced with shorter ones; wedges holding open the corridor doors everyone walks through; and glazing replaced with ordinary glass after a breakage. Each one individually compromises the 30 minutes of protection the door exists to provide.

Who should check, and how often

Anyone competent can do this five-step check — building managers, caretakers, landlords — and in residential blocks over 11 metres it's the law: quarterly checks of communal fire doors and annual checks of flat entrance doors under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. Professional inspection (BS 8214-informed, with photographic reporting and remedial schedules) belongs annually in most workplaces and whenever checks raise doubts. Record everything — date, door, finding — because the record is what regulators and insurers ask for.