Most Responsible Persons cannot tell whether the fire risk assessment they paid for is any good. That is not a criticism of them — it is a document written in a technical register, by someone they hired precisely because they are not the expert. The result is that a weak assessment and a strong one look much the same across a desk, and the difference only shows up when somebody who matters reads it: a fire officer, an insurer, a tribunal, or a solicitor acting after an incident.
You do not need to be an assessor to test one. Here is what I look at when I am asked to review somebody else's.
1. Does it describe your building, or a building?
Start with the description of the premises and check it against what you know. Storeys, stairs, construction, the year it was built, the number of flats, whether there is a lift, what the escape strategy is.
I reviewed an assessment last year that placed the building's construction somewhere between 1940 and 1985. The block was completed in 2016 — provable in an afternoon from the planning record and the community infrastructure levy notice. Everything downstream of that error was therefore reasoning about the wrong building: the assumed compartmentation, the likely cavity construction, the fire strategy the building was designed to. An assessment that gets the building wrong is not a document with a mistake in it. It is a document about somewhere else.
This is the single cheapest check available to you, and it catches the worst reports.
2. Are the findings tied to something, or floating?
Every significant finding should be traceable to a requirement — the Fire Safety Order, a standard, or published guidance — and it should say which. "Fire doors should be inspected regularly" is an opinion. A finding that names what is required, where that requirement comes from, and what interval applies to your building is a finding you can act on, price, and defend.
Watch for the opposite failure too: citations bolted on to look rigorous. If the report cites a standard, it should be the current one, and it should be relevant to your building type. A residential block assessed against guidance written for commercial premises tells you the assessor reached for the nearest template.
3. Does it say what to do, by when, and who decides?
An action should be specific enough to instruct a contractor from. "Review the fire doors" is not. "The 14 flat entrance doors on levels 3 to 5 have no intumescent seal to the head; replace or upgrade to FD30S" is. If you cannot get a quotation from the action as written, it is not an action — it is a note to the assessor's future self.
Priorities should be justified, not just coloured. A red item and an amber item that differ only in the shade tell you nothing about which one to spend money on first.
4. Does it distinguish what was seen from what was assumed?
No assessor opens up construction on a Type 1 assessment. That is normal and not a defect. What is a defect is failing to say so. The report should be explicit about what was inspected, what was sampled, what was not accessible, and what has therefore been assumed rather than verified — and it should say what would settle each assumption.
An assessment that reads as if everything was seen, when nothing was opened up, is the one that will be quoted back at you.
5. Is the effort spent where the risk actually sits?
Compartmentation between flats and common parts. Flat entrance doors. The escape strategy and whether the building still supports it. Means of raising the alarm. Evacuation of residents who cannot use stairs. Where you have a stay-put strategy, whether the building can still justify it.
An assessment heavy on signage and extinguisher servicing and light on those subjects has had its effort spent in the cheapest places.
6. Does it close the loop from last time?
If this is a review of a previous assessment, it should say what was outstanding, what has been done, and what has not. An assessment that starts from a blank page every year loses the history, which is exactly the history somebody will ask you for.
What good looks like, in one sentence
A good fire risk assessment lets a competent stranger — a fire officer, a new managing agent, a court — understand your building, see what was and was not examined, and know what must be done and why. If it does not do that, it has not protected you, whatever it cost.