Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the new fire risk assessments will be subject to a single regulatory standard; and whether leaseholders in apartment blocks under 18 metres will be informed as a result of those assessments in the event that remediation works are necessary.

Article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the FSO) states that the responsible person (usually the building owner or landlord) must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to which relevant persons are exposed for the purpose of identifying the general fire precautions they need to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed on them by the FSO. This requirement is not new, having been in place since the FSO came into force in 2006, and applies to all buildings regulated by the FSO.

The Fire Safety Act 2021 clarifies that the external walls (including cladding and balconies) and individual flat entrance doors for buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises must be included in that assessment.

The Fire Safety Act will apply to all buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises (multi-occupied residential buildings) so will include buildings under 18 metres.

Article 19 of the FSO states that the Responsible Person must provide employees with comprehensible and relevant information about relevant fire safety matters.

We are currently seeking to amend the FSO, via the Building Safety Bill, to extend this requirement to residents in buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises. ‘Relevant fire safety matters’ includes the risks to residents of the domestic premises identified by the risk assessment and the preventive and protective measures.