Routine fire door visual inspection checklist

Fifteen things to look at on a fire door, a place to record what you found and what you did about it, and a defects and actions log. Each door gets its own sheet, so a completed record can be filed, reprinted or handed on by itself.

What this checklist is for

To give someone doing a routine walk-round a consistent set of things to look at on a fire door, and somewhere to write down what they saw — between the formal inspections that a competent person carries out.

It is built around the person actually doing it: someone walking a corridor with a clipboard, looking at doors one at a time. Every line is written so that Y is the satisfactory answer, and each line is answered in one of three separate boxes — Y, N or N/A — with one mark per line. Three boxes rather than one means an unanswered line is visibly incomplete rather than quietly reading as "no".

Below the fifteen lines, each door has a short conclusion block: whether a defect was found, whether the defect is urgent, what was done about it and who it was reported to, and — the line that matters most — whether anything about this door requires competent advice. That question is there for the case where all fifteen lines are satisfactory and the door still does not look right to the person standing in front of it. A checklist with nowhere to put that judgement loses it.

Who it is for

Responsible persons under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, housing providers, managing agents, facilities managers and caretakers carrying out routine visual condition checks of fire doors.

It is written to be usable by a competent member of staff on a walk-round. It is explicitly not written for, and is not adequate for, a competent-person fire door inspection or a fire door survey.

What it does not do

This is a general template, and the limitations are the load-bearing part of it.

This is a routine visual check. It is not a fire door inspection by a competent person, and it is emphatically not a fire door survey. A visual check of a door in place cannot tell you about the door's construction, its core, its certification, the integrity of its frame fixings, the condition of concealed intumescent seals, whether the right ironmongery was used, or whether the installation was ever correct in the first place. Those questions need someone competent, with the right access, and often invasive inspection.

It does not replace, and must not be presented as:

• a competent fire risk assessment;
• professional fire-engineering advice;
• a fire door survey or a competent-person fire door inspection;
• statutory inspection, testing or maintenance by a competent person;
• premises-specific legal advice.

A completed sheet with every box ticked is not evidence that the doors are compliant. It is evidence that somebody looked at them and saw nothing obviously wrong. Those are very different claims, which is why the caution is printed at the top of page one and in the footer of every page rather than in small print at the end. A door can satisfy every line on this sheet and still not perform in a fire.

Whether your checking arrangements are the right ones for your building is a question for your fire risk assessment, not for this template. No inspection or checking interval is stated anywhere in this resource.

A note on gaps

The checklist asks whether the gaps around the leaf and at the threshold are free from anything excessive, uneven or visibly abnormal, and whether daylight shows around or beneath a closed door where it should not. It does not give you a figure to measure against, and no line asks for a measurement. That is a deliberate decision, not an omission.

A number on a general template invites a compliance judgement that a visual check cannot support: a user with a gauge and a published figure would conclude they had measured compliance, and a user without one would guess. Either outcome turns a walk-round into an apparent certification of the door set, its installation and its fire resistance — the exact misreading this resource exists to prevent. If a door needs measuring, that is a job for a competent person.

What the fifteen lines cover

In outline: whether the door is being held open by anything; whether it closes fully onto the frame under its own closer and latches shut; the gaps and any daylight; seals, hinges, the leaf, the frame and any glazing; signage; and whether the door is obstructed.

Two lines exist because of what actually turns up on flat entrance doors and on double doors. One asks whether the door is free from unauthorised alterations — letterplates, vents, cat flaps and cabling are the ones people fit without thinking of the door as fire-resisting. The other asks, for a double door, whether both leaves close in the right order and meet correctly, which a single "does it close" question misses entirely.

The general treatment of fire door specification and installation is dealt with in BS 8214. Nothing from that standard, or from any other standard, is reproduced here or in the document: this is a condition-checking aid, not an implementation of a code of practice.

"Could not see" is an answer

"Not applicable" and "could not check" are different things. If you could not see or reach something — a concealed seal, the far side of a flat entrance door, a door you had no access to — write that in the notes rather than leaving the line blank or ticking it. A gap in the record is more useful than a false tick, because it tells the next person where to look.

Urgent defects

A door that will not close is not a paperwork matter. The document carries a separate instruction to report immediately any fire door that does not close, is significantly damaged, has been removed, cannot be secured where required, or may materially affect the safety of occupants — following the premises' own escalation arrangements, and preventing unsafe reliance on the door until competent advice or repair is obtained. Every defect goes in the defects and actions log as well as on the door's own sheet.

If your building is a block of flats in England

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 place additional duties on responsible persons for certain multi-occupied residential buildings, and two of them are worth keeping apart.

The first is a set of checking duties covering communal fire doors and flat entrance doors. These apply to buildings above a height threshold, which the Regulations measure by reference to the height of the top storey.

The second is a duty to give residents information about fire doors — keeping them shut, not tampering with self-closing devices, and reporting faults. That duty is not limited by the height threshold that governs the checking duties, and reaches more widely across relevant multi-occupied residential buildings with common parts.

This template is a general routine visual-check aid. It is not a statement of either duty and does not discharge either of them. Confirm what applies to your own building against the Regulations themselves and the current official government fire door guidance.

Available formats

The PDF is the one to print. It is A4 portrait, ten pages: the notice and the panels that go with it on page one, then one door to a page, with the defects and actions log last. Print as many door sheets as you have doors — a twenty-door building prints twenty sheets, which is what a per-door record honestly is.

One door per page is a deliberate choice rather than a generous one. A fifteen-row table with a header block above it and a conclusion block below it does not fit twice on an A4 page without shrinking the rows below a height you can write in, or splitting the table into side-by-side columns that wreck the reading order for anyone using a screen reader. Neither is worth doing. The result is also the better document: each sheet is a self-contained record of one door.

The Word file is the same document, editable, for anyone who needs to adapt the premises details, the door-type options or the wording before printing. There is no spreadsheet version: this is a form that is read on site and filled in by hand, not a grid that is totalled.

Version, issue and review

Version 1.0, first published 1 August 2026. Reviewed 1 August 2026 by Batir Turakulov, Fire Engineer (MIFireE) and Chartered Health & Safety Professional (CMIOSH). Next review due 1 August 2027.

Review it sooner than that if the doors, the building, its height, its use or its occupancy change, or if the fire door checking duties applying to your building change.

The version number is in the filename, because a document downloaded today has to be able to identify itself a year from now in somebody's folder.

Accessibility

The PDF is tagged, with a document title, en-GB language metadata and a real heading structure. The notice on page one is real text in the reading order, marked up as a heading and paragraphs rather than an image of text. The panels beside it each carry their own heading and sit next to the notice in the reading order rather than after the checklist, and the panel about checking duties and the panel about information to residents are separate structures — a merged reading order would make the height threshold appear to govern both, which it does not.

Each per-door table has header cells with scope and a caption naming the door reference, so the tables are distinguishable to a screen-reader user. The Y, N and N/A responses are three separately labelled controls, the conclusion questions below each table sit in the same tab order as the rows above them, and no state is conveyed by colour or shading alone. The notes column has real width, for handwriting and for magnified viewing. The Word file carries the same title, language and heading structure.

There is no printable HTML version of this resource at present. This is a resource that would suit one — it is used on site, often on a phone, walking a corridor — and an on-page printable version is planned. It is a separate piece of work rather than part of this release, so what is offered here today is the document, and the explanatory content lives on this page in the meantime. Nothing on this page should be read as saying an HTML version already exists.

Licence and permitted use

Free to use, print, complete and adapt for your own premises or organisation, including by your staff and contractors working on those premises. No registration, payment or attribution is required for that use.

Not for resale, licensing, distribution for a fee, or republication on another website or in another collection. Do not present an adapted version as our work or remove the attribution. © Lion Risk Management Solutions.

Disclaimer

This checklist is intended solely as a routine visual inspection aid. It is not a fire door survey, does not certify compliance, and must not be relied upon to determine whether a fire door assembly satisfies legal or technical requirements. It cannot confirm door construction, fire-resistance performance, certification, concealed components, frame fixings, or installation quality. Where defects are identified or compliance is uncertain, advice should be obtained from a suitably competent person.

It is a general template published for general information, and must be adapted to the premises it is used in. It is not legal advice and it is not premises-specific professional advice. Completing it does not by itself discharge any legal duty: the responsible person remains responsible for deciding whether this template is appropriate to their premises, for adapting it, and for acting on what it records.