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Fire safety measures

Fire safety responsibilities

In this guide

Leaseholder responsibilities

As a leaseholder, you are likely to be responsible for fire safety within your own flat.

Those responsibilities would include:

  • maintaining fire doors (including the entrance door to your flat)
  • avoiding fire hazards
  • following fire safety policies: these must be shared with you by the person responsible for fire safety
  • regular checks of your smoke alarms

You also need to cooperate with the person responsible for fire safety in your building.

This can include allowing access to your flat for inspections and maintenance. If you do not cooperate with fire safety requests, you could be breaching safety regulations and the terms of your lease.

You should report any fire safety issues as soon as possible, so that they can take action to fix the problem.

Contact your landlord, building manager or management company to find out who is responsible for fire safety.

Duties of the responsible person

In buildings containing flats, the responsible person refers to the person or organisation that oversees the shared areas - such as entrance halls, stairwells and the outside of the building.

The responsible person is usually the building owner (freeholder), landlord or management company. They might delegate management of fire safety to a managing agent, but they are still legally responsible.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the fire safety duties of a responsible person may include:

  • conducting and regularly reviewing the fire risk assessment
  • maintaining fire doors in common parts
  • checking doors fire doors (at least annually for flat entrance doors and quarterly for communal doors for buildings in England over 11 metres)
  • providing fire safety instructions to residents, including signage and escape routes
  • ensuring proper maintenance of fire and smoke alarm systems
  • offering a personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) to residents that may need help when evacuating the building (effective from 6 April 2026 in England for high-rise buildings)

You should contact the landlord or building manager about any fire safety issues.

Last updated:
2 April 2026
Next review:
2 April 2028