Fire risk assessment for holiday lets.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to a holiday let because it is not occupied as a private dwelling while paying guests are in it. The responsible person, usually the owner or the agency that manages the property, must carry out a fire risk assessment, record the significant findings and act on them. There is no minimum number of weeks let per year below which the duty falls away.

The right benchmark depends on the size of the property. The Home Office guide Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire, updated January 2025, covers a house of up to two storeys sleeping no more than ten guests with no more than four bedrooms on the first floor, or a single flat. A larger holiday house, a property with a second floor, or anything sleeping more than ten is assessed against the HM Government Sleeping Accommodation guide, which asks for more. We confirm which guide applies from the floor plan and guest numbers before the visit.

Holiday lets also carry duties that are not fire safety law but that a fire risk assessment will check for: an annual gas safety record where there is a gas appliance, a fixed wiring inspection at least every five years, the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 on the furniture you provide, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a gas, oil or solid fuel appliance.

• Guest numbers and sleeping arrangements: how many the property sleeps, which rooms are bedrooms, whether any sofa bed or bunk room is used for sleeping, and whether the total takes the property outside the small premises guide.
• The escape route: the hall and stairs, the construction around them, the doors opening onto them, and whether every bedroom reaches the stairs without passing through another room.
• Open fires and stoves: spark guard, hearth, annual sweep record, fuel storage, a metal ash bin, user instructions for guests, and a carbon monoxide alarm in the room.
• Gas and LPG: the gas safety record, where cylinders are stored, and whether an LPG cooker has an isolation valve on the pipework.
• Smoke and heat alarms: coverage of the hall, landing, living room, bedrooms and kitchen, interlinking, and the power supply.
• Final exits and gates: doors that open from inside without a key, and side or rear gates that are not padlocked shut when the back door is an escape route.
• Electrical: the fixed wiring report, the appliances provided, extension leads and adaptors, and portable heaters left for guests.
• Guest information and changeover: the fire page in the welcome folder, the notice on the bedroom door, the address and postcode guests would give to the fire service, and what is tested when the property is turned around.

A holiday let is often let to one party of eight or ten who treat it as home for a week, with children asleep upstairs and a fire lit downstairs. That combination of unfamiliar building, full occupancy and open flame is why we assess the whole house and not just the hallway.

The Home Office guide sets a sensible standard for a small holiday let. Its worked examples include a two-storey three-bedroom house and a two-storey listed cottage with a log burner and an LPG cooker, which between them cover most of the properties we see.

Rural holiday lets can be a long way from the nearest fire station, so the escape route and the alarms have to work on their own. The guide is clear that relying on the fire and rescue service to get guests out is not acceptable.

You receive a written assessment of the whole property with the significant findings, a risk rating and a prioritised action plan. Each action is written to stand alone, naming the location, the defect, the remedy and the finished outcome, so a local joiner, electrician or chimney sweep can price it from the action alone.

We benchmark against the guide that actually applies to your property and say so in the report. If a letting agency or an insurer has sent you a generic checklist that asks for fire doors throughout, a fire alarm panel and emergency lighting, we will tell you what the published guidance asks for in a property of your size, which is normally considerably less.

Where the action plan calls for electrical or alarm works, we can quote for them separately. The assessment fee is fixed, the actions are written so that any contractor can carry them out, and the report is yours to use with whoever you choose.

We assess holiday lets and self-catering properties across Greater Manchester and the North West, and we are qualified electricians as well as registered assessors, so the alarm and wiring findings come from people who install and test those systems every week.

• NFRAR: National Fire Risk Assessors Register.
• IFSM: Associate member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers.
• Qualified electricians in-house: for the alarm, lighting and electrical works that follow.
• Fixed fee: the assessment costs the same however many findings there are, and you are free to use any contractor.