If you are selling a flat in a converted house or a purpose-built block, there is a good chance the buyer's solicitor or mortgage lender will ask to see a current fire risk assessment for the building before they will let the sale complete. For many sellers this comes as a surprise, often late in the process, and it is a common reason for a sale to stall. This guide explains what is being asked for, why, and how to keep the chain moving.
It is general information rather than legal or conveyancing advice. Treat the fire risk assessment request as a common transaction requirement, not as an automatic legal duty that falls on you as an individual seller. The duty to hold the assessment usually sits with whoever controls the communal parts of the building.
What is actually being requested
The document in question is a fire risk assessment of the building's communal areas: the shared entrance, hallways, staircases and any shared plant. It is required under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and the responsible person for those communal parts, typically the freeholder, the management company, or the managing agent, is the one who should hold it.
The buyer's side asks for it because they want assurance that the building is safe and that the lender's security, the flat, is not exposed to an unmanaged fire risk. A missing, expired, or clearly inadequate assessment is treated as a red flag.
Why this has become so common
Two things have driven this. First, fire safety law tightened significantly after the Grenfell Tower fire, and the scope of what an assessment must cover in multi-occupied residential buildings has widened. The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed that the structure, external walls and flat entrance doors are within scope, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, in force since 23 January 2023, added duties for these buildings.
Second, lenders and conveyancers have become much more cautious about fire safety in flats. Where they once may not have asked, they now routinely require evidence that a current assessment is in place before releasing funds.
The communal assessment versus your individual flat
This is the point that confuses most sellers. You generally do not commission a fire risk assessment for the inside of your own flat. What is needed is the assessment of the communal parts of the building, which is the responsibility of the freeholder or management company.
In practice that means, if you are asked for the assessment, your first step is usually to contact your freeholder or managing agent and request the current document. If they have one and it is in date, the request is quickly satisfied. The problems start when the responsible person has not had an assessment done, or it is years out of date.
Fire risk assessment versus EWS1 form
These two are frequently confused, and they are not the same.
- A fire risk assessment is a life-safety review of the building required under the Fire Safety Order. It looks at the whole picture of fire risk and management for the communal parts.
- An EWS1 form is a separate document used by mortgage lenders to assess the external wall system of certain buildings for valuation purposes. It is administered through the valuation process and is not a life-safety assessment in the same sense.
One does not replace the other. Depending on the building, you may be asked for both. Knowing the difference helps you respond accurately when a solicitor's enquiry lands, rather than supplying the wrong document and losing more time.
Who pays for it
Because the assessment is a duty of the responsible person for the communal areas, the cost normally falls to the freeholder or management company, often recovered through the service charge, rather than to an individual seller. In a converted house where the leaseholders jointly own the freehold, the leaseholders may share the cost between them. If a sale is being held up and the responsible party is slow to act, sellers sometimes arrange and fund an assessment themselves to keep the chain together, but that is a commercial decision rather than a legal obligation.
How to avoid a stalled sale
The single biggest cause of delay is leaving the question until a buyer's solicitor raises it. By then you may be weeks from exchange with no document and a slow freeholder. To get ahead of it:
- Ask your freeholder or managing agent now whether a current communal fire risk assessment exists, and request a copy.
- Check the date. If it is more than a year or two old, or predates the 2021 and 2022 changes, expect the buyer's side to question it.
- If there is no assessment, raise it with the responsible person early so it can be commissioned before it becomes a chain-breaker.
- Keep the assessment and any remedial certificates together so they can be handed over quickly.
How J&L Security can help
If you are a freeholder, a management company, or a group of leaseholders who need a communal fire risk assessment arranged quickly, J&L Security can help. We arrange the assessment through a fire risk assessor we work with who holds AIFSM, TMIFPO and NEBOSH, and, where it identifies work, we carry out the remedials directly: fire alarm (we are BAFE-accredited for fire alarm installation and maintenance), emergency lighting, electrical testing and fire door works. That single-provider route is usually the fastest way to get from a request on a conveyancing enquiry to a building that is demonstrably compliant.
We cover Essex and Greater London. See our fire risk assessments page, or call 0204 538 5925 or 0208 220 4770. You can also request a call back.