With effect from 1st June 2022, changes have been made to fire safety guidance and the building regulations to help ensure enhanced safety for taller buildings in the UK, as part of a broader package of UK Government reforms.

Having a fire risk assessment carried out is a key part of this, but what exactly does this process involve?

A fire strategy is a structured plan outlining how a building complies with fire safety regulations, ensuring occupant safety and legal adherence. This article explores its key components, legal importance, and how digital solutions like Vision Pro Software can streamline fire safety management.

Managing fire safety compliance in large estates like NHS facilities and universities presents challenges such as incomplete risk assessments, poor maintenance, and unclear accountability. This article explores key fire safety challenges and effective solutions, including the role of compliance software in enhancing fire risk management.

There are inevitably a lot of complicated and challenging matters for landlords and business owners in the UK to navigate on a day-by-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month basis.

Manual fire risk compliance is labor-intensive and prone to errors, while automation streamlines assessments, enhances accuracy, and ensures regulatory adherence. Explore the benefits of automated systems over traditional methods for efficient fire safety management.

To understand the difference between the two, we first need to understand a Fire Risk Assessment and just how far that takes you in managing yours or your client’s fire risk.

In your capacity as a business owner or manager, it might seem perfectly understandable to you why achieving compliance with the various legislation surrounding fire safety may not exactly be at the top of your priority list.

As a landlord, it will always be in your interests – not just those of your tenant(s) – to ensure the buildings for which you are responsible pose the lowest possible fire risk. Integral to this will be ensuring your properties are thoroughly assessed for the risk of fire, with suitable measures subsequently put in place to help protect occupants.

As we know, in the early morning hours of 14th June 2017, a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower residential block in West London. The blaze killed 72 people, making it the worst residential fire in the UK since the Blitz during the Second World War. Seven years later, on 4th September 2024, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry published its final report into the disaster.

The Building Safety Bill, which at the time of writing is passing through the House of Commons, is far from just another piece of building safety legislation. It has been described by UK Government officials as helping to bring about the “biggest changes to building safety for nearly 40 years.”

Purpose-built flats can represent an especially distinctive challenge as far as fire safety is concerned. Flats have been a key part of the UK’s housing stock since Victorian times, and it has long been recognised that any building effectively containing multiple residential dwellings – rather than just one – brings with it the possibility of human occupants being at higher risk in the event of a fire.