Fire risk assessment for serviced accommodation.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the responsible person for a serviced apartment is whoever has control of it. For an operator who leases a unit from the owner and lets it to guests, that is the operator. The owner is not relieved of their duties by the arrangement, and where more than one person has duties for the same building, Article 22 requires them to cooperate and coordinate. In practice that means your assessment of the apartment and the freeholder’s assessment of the common parts have to agree about how a guest gets out.

The apartment is assessed against the Home Office guide Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire, updated January 2025, which covers individual flats, purpose-built or converted, other than unusually large ones. The guide’s own worked examples include an open-plan studio and a two-bedroom flat with a hallway. Serviced houses are assessed on the same basis as other short-term lets, and anything outside the small premises scope is assessed against the Sleeping Accommodation guide.

The common parts of the block are not yours to assess, but they are part of your guests’ escape route. The building’s responsible person must have their own fire risk assessment of the common parts under the Order, and in a block with two or more sets of domestic premises the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 add duties on fire doors and resident information. We ask for the block’s evacuation strategy and its common parts assessment, and we flag it in your report if neither can be produced.

• The flat entrance door: whether it is a fire door, whether it self-closes fully into its frame, and how it opens from the inside. In a flat the entrance door protects both your guests and everyone else in the block.
• The building’s evacuation strategy: whether the block is stay put or simultaneous evacuation, and whether the instructions you give guests match it. A guest told to leave on hearing an alarm in a stay put block, or told to stay in a block that evacuates, is a finding either way.
• The internal layout: the route from each bedroom to the entrance door, open-plan arrangements, and any bedroom reached only through another room.
• Smoke and heat alarms within the unit: coverage, interlinking and power supply, and whether any detection in the unit is linked to a communal system that we should know about.
• Access and locks: key safes, keypads and smart locks, which must release from inside without a code or power, and any door that needs a key to open from inside.
• Appliances and services: the fixed wiring report, the appliances you provide, the cooker and the heating, and the carbon monoxide alarm where there is a gas appliance.
• Guest information: the fire instructions in the unit, whether they give the full address, apartment number and floor for a 999 call, and whether they describe the way out of the building and not just the flat.
• Housekeeping and changeover: who services the unit, what is tested at each changeover and whether it is recorded.

Where you run several units in the same block, we assess each one on its own and note what they share, so you have a separate record per unit without paying for the same common parts to be looked at five times.

The Home Office guide gives a clear, proportionate standard for an individual flat let to paying guests. The points that differ from a house are the entrance door, which is expected to be a self-closing fire door, and the relationship with the rest of the building.

A serviced apartment in a converted building needs more care than one in a purpose-built block, because the compartmentation between flats may not have been built to a standard that supports stay put. We ask the building owner for evidence of the conversion standard and treat its absence as a finding for them, not a guess for you.

You receive a written assessment per unit with the significant findings, a risk rating and a prioritised action plan. Actions are split between those you can act on in the apartment and those that belong to the building’s responsible person, so you know what to fix and what to raise with the freeholder or managing agent, in writing, with the relevant regulation cited.

For a portfolio we keep the format identical across units so that a corporate client, an insurer or a council can read ten reports the same way. Each report records the building’s evacuation strategy and whether the common parts assessment was produced, which is the question you will be asked after an incident.

Where the action plan calls for alarm or electrical works within the unit, we quote separately. The assessment fee is fixed per unit and does not change with the findings.

Serviced accommodation operators are who this site is built for. We understand that your record has to survive a change of cleaner, a change of building manager and a corporate client’s compliance questionnaire, and we write the report for that.

• 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.