Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022: what changed

What section 156 is

The Building Safety Act 2022 received Royal Assent in April 2022. Most of it concerns higher-risk buildings and the new Building Safety Regulator, but section 156 does something different: it amends the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 itself, and therefore reaches every premises the Order applies to — every workplace, every non-domestic premises, and the common parts of every block of flats in England and Wales.

The amendments were commenced on 1 October 2023. They are sometimes described in the sector simply as "section 156", and they represent the second of the government’s post-Grenfell fire safety reform phases, following the Fire Safety Act 2021 and running alongside the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022.

Change one: record the assessment in full, always

Before October 2023, the duty to record a fire risk assessment in writing applied only in specified circumstances — most commonly where the responsible person employed five or more people, or where the premises were licensed or subject to an alterations notice. Even then, only the significant findings and the details of anyone especially at risk had to be recorded.

That has gone. Every responsible person must now record the completed fire risk assessment in full, including all of its findings, together with the fire safety arrangements for the premises, regardless of the size or purpose of the business or building. In practice this converts the fire risk assessment from a process with a summary output into a document that has to stand on its own — which is precisely why disciplined, complete recording of every checklist answer, observation and piece of evidence now matters more than it used to.

Change two: name the assessor

Where the responsible person engages someone to assist with the fire risk assessment, the name of that individual and, where applicable, their organisation should be recorded. The stated purpose is traceability: an enforcing authority, an incoming responsible person or a resident should be able to see who did the work.

For assessment practices this is a small change with a real consequence — your name is now expected to be on the face of the report, permanently attached to the judgements in it.

Change three: competence (not yet commenced)

Section 156 also introduces a legislative requirement that any person appointed to make or review a fire risk assessment must be competent. Importantly, this specific provision has not yet been brought into force — the government has said it will commence at a later date with guidance published beforehand.

It changes little in substance. The responsible person has always had a duty to ensure the assessment is suitable and sufficient, and government advice is unambiguous that assessors should be competent in the meantime — sufficient training, experience, knowledge and other qualities for the premises in question. What commencement will change is the ability to enforce against the appointment itself, rather than only against the resulting assessment.

Change four: cooperation between responsible persons

Where more than one responsible person exists for a premises — multi-occupied buildings, or buildings where the occupier and the owner are different entities — section 156 strengthens the duties to identify each other, cooperate, coordinate and share relevant fire safety information. A departing responsible person must also hand over the fire safety information they hold to their successor.

This is the change most likely to surface in an assessor’s findings, because the failure mode is so common: a landlord who has assessed the common parts, tenants who have assessed their demises, and nobody who has reconciled the two into a coherent picture of the building.

Change five: information to residents

In residential buildings with two or more sets of domestic premises, the responsible person must provide residents with comprehensible information about the fire risks in their building and the fire safety measures provided to keep them safe. This expands on the resident-information duties already introduced by Regulation 9 and Regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, which cover evacuation strategy and fire doors specifically.

What it means in practice for assessors

The direction of travel is documentary. Enforcement increasingly turns on what can be produced rather than what was done, and "we assessed it but only wrote up the significant findings" is no longer a defensible position anywhere.

That has a practical consequence for how assessments are produced. A methodology that records every checklist response, ties each observation to a location and a photograph, names the assessor and dates the work is now the minimum. Working through a PAS 79-structured assessment in fire risk assessment software makes complete recording the default rather than an act of discipline — the full assessment is captured because it is captured as you go, and the exported report contains all of it.

Frequently asked questions