Fire Risk Assessment in Kettering: A Written Report You Can Act On

Who is the responsible person for a Kettering building?

The duty sits with whoever has control of the premises. That is not always the person who thinks it is.

For a business it is normally the employer. For a let building it is the landlord or the managing agent. For the common parts of a block of flats, it is whoever manages the block. If two parties share a building, both have duties and they have to coordinate. Our guide to who the responsible person is goes through the common arrangements.

Article 9 of the Order requires a suitable and sufficient assessment. Article 11 requires you to plan and organise the fire safety arrangements, and article 17 requires the fire protection to be maintained. Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service enforces the Order across the county and publishes its own guidance for businesses. A written assessment is what an inspecting officer, an insurer or a buyer's solicitor will ask to see first.

The Kettering building types we assess

Kettering grew on boot and shoe manufacturing. The town still has a lot of older buildings with a newer use inside them.

The old factory trade left Victorian blocks and terraces. Where one has been converted, extended or split up, the original fire separation can be incomplete. A building that was fine as a single-use property can end up with an escape route running through a neighbour's unit. We check what is actually there, not what the plans say.

• Town centre shops and offices. Stockrooms behind sales floors, storage on staircases, and flats above with an entrance through the shop or an alley.
• Flats over shops. The shop and the flat are different risk types sharing one escape route. The assessment looks at the separating floor, the flat entrance door and the rear exit.
• Industrial and trade units. Mezzanines, racking, battery charging, and a mix of office space and warehouse under one roof.
• Pubs, restaurants and takeaways. Kitchen extract, accommodation upstairs, and doors wedged open for service.
• Care homes and supported living. Evacuation strategy, night staffing and compartments, covered below.
• HMOs and blocks of flats. Shared hallways, stairs and entrance doors.

If you run a unit on one of the larger estates, our industrial fire alarm page covers the detection side. The assessment decides what is needed. It does not sell you a system.

HMOs in North Northamptonshire: what the licence means for fire safety

Kettering sits in North Northamptonshire, which has a different HMO regime from the county's western council.

North Northamptonshire Council has been the local authority for Kettering since it replaced the old district and county councils on 1 April 2021. On its own HMO pages, the council says a property occupied by five or more people from more than one household needs a mandatory HMO licence. It also says it does not currently meet the legal tests for additional licensing or selective licensing, so a three or four person HMO here does not need a licence under those schemes. As of August 2025 the council reported nearly 500 licensed HMOs and 338 non-licensable ones.

Do not mix this up with West Northamptonshire, which is a separate council with its own additional licensing scheme. If a landlord in Kettering is told an HMO needs a licence because of a Northampton rule, they have the wrong council.

A licence is not a fire risk assessment. The council can license a house and inspect it, but under the Fire Safety Order the person in control of the shared parts still has to assess and record the fire risk. Our HMO fire safety guide for landlords sets out what a landlord has to hold, and the HMO page covers the services we offer for them. A non-licensable HMO of three or four people still has a fire risk to manage.

Care homes and other sleeping risks

Where people sleep and cannot all evacuate unaided, the assessment has to be about people as much as the building.

We look at how many staff are on at night, how residents are moved, whether the building is divided into compartments that let you move people sideways instead of down the stairs, and whether the doors that make those compartments actually shut. Our care home fire alarm page covers detection, and fire doors for care homes covers the doors.

What the assessment covers, and what you get

A walk through the whole building, then a written report with the actions in priority order.

1. 1Pre-visit. We ask for any previous assessment, floor plans, alarm and emergency lighting certificates, and the number of people in the building.
2. 2The walk. Ignition sources, fuel, escape routes, alarm, emergency lighting, extinguishers, doors, signage, housekeeping and training.
3. 3Questions. Who is in the building at night, who is vulnerable, and who runs the evacuation.
4. 4The report. Written in a PAS 79-1 style, led by Sebastian Grabowski, who holds the Level 4 Diploma in Fire Risk Assessment. Every finding has a priority and a plain description of the fix.
5. 5Review date. A date to revisit, and the events that bring it forward. See how often to review a fire risk assessment.

A fire risk assessment is a separate service from a fire door inspection. The assessment looks at doors as part of the whole picture. It does not replace an itemised inspection of each door, and an inspection does not replace the assessment. They sit side by side.

Cost and what moves it

One honest starting point, then the real price from your details.

A fire risk assessment for a small commercial premises starts from about £550 + VAT. The price rises with floor area, number of floors, how many people sleep there and how complicated the layout is. A care home or a block with many flats costs more than a shop, because there is more to check and more to write. Send us the address, the use and a few photos and we give you a fixed price. We usually come back with a fixed price the same day.

Kettering is about 50 miles from our Luton office, roughly an hour by road. We do not charge for travel. We also cover Northampton and the wider East Midlands, see Northampton and fire doors in the East Midlands. The national page is fire risk assessments. Working near Wellingborough instead? See fire risk assessments in Wellingborough.

Sources

• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (legislation.gov.uk)
• HMOs in North Northamptonshire (North Northamptonshire Council)
• The law on HMOs (North Northamptonshire Council)
• Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service

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