Section 156: Written Fire Risk Assessments Are Now Mandatory

Until October 2023, a pub with three employees and no premises licence had no legal obligation to write down its fire risk assessment. The responsible person could keep the whole thing in their head. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 only required a written record of "significant findings" where specific thresholds were met: five or more employees, a licence under an enactment, or an alterations notice from the fire authority.

Most pubs were already caught. A premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 counted as a "licence under an enactment," which triggered the recording duty regardless of headcount. But small cafes, pop-up bars, food trucks operating from fixed premises, and unlicensed venues with fewer than five staff fell through the gap.

Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 closed it. Since 1 October 2023, every responsible person must record their fire risk assessment in full: not just significant findings, but the complete assessment, in writing, regardless of how many people they employ or whether they hold a licence.

What Section 156 actually changed

The amendment rewrote Article 9(6) and Article 11(2) of the Fire Safety Order. Before, the recording duty was conditional. Now it is universal.

Three obligations landed at once:

1. Record the fire risk assessment in full. A mental note, a verbal plan discussed with your alarm contractor, a set of assumptions you haven't written down: none of these count.
2. Record the name and, where applicable, the organisation of anyone you engage to make or review the assessment.
3. Record the arrangements for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring, and reviewing fire safety measures. Previously, this duty only applied past the same thresholds: five or more employees, a licence, or an alterations notice.

Section 156 also introduced Article 22A: when a pub changes hands, the outgoing responsible person must pass the fire risk assessment, the assessor's identity, and any building safety information to the incoming operator.

Who this catches that it didn't before

Licensed premises were already caught by the old rules. The real change affects premises that fell outside every previous threshold.

A cafe with two employees and no premises licence. A takeaway operating from a fixed site with three staff. A market stall with a permanent pitch. A small B&B that doesn't serve alcohol. Any premises that falls under the Fire Safety Order now needs a written assessment, full stop.

For pubs, the practical difference is narrower. You probably needed a written FRA already. But the change matters if you run a very small operation (a micropub with one part-time employee, say) where the only thing that made a written record mandatory was the premises licence. The duty now exists independently of the licence.

The assembly guide hasn't caught up

The government's official fire safety guide for pubs, "Fire safety risk assessment: small and medium places of assembly," still references the old recording thresholds. It tells you to record significant findings if you have five or more employees, hold a licence, or have received an alterations notice.

That guidance is out of date on this point. Section 156 supersedes it. All responsible persons must record the full assessment, not just significant findings, and the five-employee threshold no longer applies to the recording duty.

The Section 156 guidance is the controlling document on recording duties, not the assembly guide's older text. Full written assessments are required regardless of headcount or licence status.

What "record in full" means

The Fire Safety Order doesn't prescribe a format. Paper logbooks, digital records, a PDF on a laptop behind the bar. Article 27 of the Fire Safety Order expressly permits computerised records and gives inspectors the power to require extracts from them.

What matters is that the assessment exists, covers your premises specifically, and is accessible when someone asks for it. A fire officer who requests your FRA during an inspection expects to read a document, not hear a summary from memory.

What makes an assessment suitable and sufficient, when to review it, and whether you can do it yourself are questions worth working through with a competent fire risk assessor.

Enforcement

There is no separate offence for failing to record the assessment. The recording duty is part of Article 9 and Article 11, and enforcement runs through the same mechanisms as every other Fire Safety Order breach: informal advice, enforcement notices, prohibition notices, prosecution. The enforcement ladder applies.

In practice, a missing or absent FRA is rarely the only finding. The typical enforcement notice cites six separate failures at once¹. A missing written assessment usually travels with the problems it was supposed to prevent: blocked exits, untested alarms, untrained staff.