Fire safety logbook and maintenance tracker

A general template logbook for keeping the fire safety record of a premises in one place — systems, servicing, training, drills and open defects — in sixteen sections, with a spreadsheet companion for the maintenance tracker.

What this logbook is for

This is the document you hand to an inspector, an insurer, an incoming managing agent or your fire risk assessor when they ask what has actually been done here. It brings the routine records, contractor visits, training, drills and outstanding defects together, so that nobody has to assemble the picture from three inboxes and a filing cabinet.

Every servicing table ends in a "next due" column, so the logbook works forwards as well as backwards: it is a record of what happened and a view of what is coming.

Who it is for

Responsible persons under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 who need one place to keep the fire safety record for a premises: building owners, landlords, managing agents, facilities managers, school business managers and care home managers.

It is most useful where several different people and contractors each touch fire safety and nobody currently holds the whole picture.

What is inside

Sixteen sections, each with one or two tables in a consistent shape — what, when, who, and what came of it.

Front matter and how to use it. Premises name and address, the date the logbook was started, and its number in the sequence, so a book can identify itself when it is one of several. The opening note explains the convention the rest of the document depends on: a section you do not need — because there are no sprinklers, or no smoke control — is marked "not applicable to these premises" with a reason, rather than left blank. A blank section reads as a gap; a marked one reads as a decision.

Premises and responsibilities (Section 1). A description of the building, its use, approximate occupancy, number of storeys and height category if known, followed by a table of who holds which role: responsible person, the people with day-to-day fire safety duties, nominated persons for evacuation, and fire wardens or marshals — with organisation, contact and date appointed.

Fire risk assessment record (Section 2). When the assessment was carried out, by whom, their company, what was noted about their competence, the type or scope of the assessment, when the next review is due, and where the assessment itself is held. A second table tracks the significant findings through to completion: the finding, the risk noted, the action required, the owner, the target date, the date completed and who verified it.

Detection and alarm (Section 3), emergency lighting (Section 4) and firefighting equipment (Section 5). Each carries a summary of the premises' own routine testing — or a cross-reference to the separate record where one is kept — and a servicing table recording the date, the company, the engineer, the visit type, the certificate reference, any defects raised and the next visit due. Emergency lighting adds a line for each full-duration test that records the duration actually achieved and whether every luminaire was still illuminated at the end, rather than a bare pass mark.

Fire doors (Section 6). A summary of routine visual checks, plus a table recording the date, who carried out the work, the scope, defects raised and the report reference. It also records an inspection type — routine visual check, competent-person inspection, or survey. That column exists specifically so that a routine visual check cannot be logged as an inspection: the three are different activities carried out by different people to different depths, and a logbook that blurs them overstates what has been done.

Other fire safety systems (Section 7). One table each for sprinklers and suppression; smoke control and automatic opening vents; dry and wet risers; firefighting lifts; fire shutters; hold-open devices; and access control and door release on alarm. Each table carries a "not applicable to these premises" tick and a space for the reason at its head, so absence is recorded as a decision rather than read as an omission.

Escape routes and signage (Section 8). The date checked, the areas covered, obstructions found, signage defects, the action taken and who checked.

Training (Section 9) and drills (Section 10). Training records the date, the topic, who delivered it, the attendees or a reference to the list, the duration and when a refresher falls due. Drills record the scenario, the evacuation time, the number evacuated, the actions arising and where the fuller record is held.

People needing assistance (Section 11). Name or reference, location, whether a personal emergency evacuation plan is in place, when it was agreed, when it was last reviewed and by whom. The section notes that a logbook held openly on site may be better kept using references rather than names. That is flagged as a decision for you to make about your own document — it is a prompt, not data protection advice, and how you handle personal information in your records remains your call.

False alarms and actuations (Section 12). Date, time, zone or device, whether the fire and rescue service attended — and, importantly, the cause where it is known and what was done to prevent recurrence. A count of false alarms tells you almost nothing. A record of what caused them and what changed afterwards is the thing that lets a pattern be seen and broken.

Contractor and visitor log (Section 13). Fire-safety-related work carried out on site: the date, the company, the person, what was done, which systems were affected, and who signed it off. It records isolations put in place and isolations removed as two separate entries, because a system isolated for contractor work and never restored is where real incidents originate. Two columns make an unclosed isolation visible on the page.

Open defects register (Section 14). The spine of the document. Every other section can raise a defect into it, and it is the one table an inspector or an incoming agent will read first: the defect, the system or area, any interim measure, the owner, the target date, the date closed and who verified the closure.

Logbook review (Section 15). When the whole logbook was last reviewed, by whom, which sections were found incomplete and what was done about it. It exists so that reviewing the book is itself a recorded act.

What it does not do

This is a general template. A logbook records activity; it does not determine what activity your premises needs. What systems you have, how often they are serviced, what training is required and what "adequate" looks like all come from your fire risk assessment and the design of the systems installed.

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

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

A complete logbook is not a compliant building. It is a record of what was done. It cannot confirm that the right things were done, that they were done competently, or that the premises satisfies legal or technical requirements. If the wrong things were done diligently, the record will still look immaculate. That sentence is printed in the logbook's own introduction rather than buried at the back.

No servicing, testing or inspection interval is stated anywhere in this resource. Every table asks when the next visit or check is due and asserts nothing about when that should be; the rhythm is the premises' own arrangement, taken from its fire risk assessment and its system designs, not an instruction from us.

Available formats

The PDF is the primary version and the one to print. It is A4, twenty-four pages, bookmarked and with a table of contents — a compiled document meant to be printed once, filed or bound, and written in over years.

The Word file is the same document, editable, for anyone who needs to adapt the premises details, the role names or the section headings before printing.

The spreadsheet is the maintenance tracker element only — not the whole logbook. It carries four sheets: assets, servicing, next due and open defects, with "next due" as a filtered view by date so you can see what is coming. It contains no formulas. Nothing recalculates, nothing is derived, and it does not determine any maintenance interval: what you type is what is recorded. Use it alongside a printed logbook rather than instead of one.

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, or earlier on a change to the premises, its systems, its use or its occupancy, or a relevant change to legislation or standards.

The version number is in the filename, because a logbook started this year has to be able to identify which issue it was printed from long after the download is forgotten.

Accessibility

The PDF is tagged, with a document title, en-GB language metadata and heading levels in order. At twenty-four pages, the bookmarks and the table of contents are the features that matter most: a screen-reader user can reach the open defects register without traversing thirteen tables to get there. Every table has a caption naming its section, header cells with scope, and a header row that repeats across page breaks, and the same column order is used throughout, so the structure does not have to be re-learned on each page. The "not applicable to these premises" ticks are labelled controls rather than shaded cells.

The Word file carries the same title, language and heading structure. The spreadsheet has one logical table per sheet, descriptive sheet names, frozen header rows set as print titles, explicit date formats, no merged cells in any data range, and validation lists rather than free text on the status columns.

There is no printable HTML version, and that is deliberate. This is a compiled, laid-out, multi-section document intended to be printed once, filed and written in over years; a web version would be a poor imitation of the thing people actually want on site. The section-by-section description above exists so that nobody has to download twenty-four pages to find out what is in them, and the spreadsheet covers the one part — the maintenance tracker — where a digital, sortable version genuinely helps.

Licence and permitted use

© Lion Risk Management Solutions.

You may download, print, complete and adapt this resource for use in 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.

You may not resell it, license it, distribute it for a fee, republish it on another website or in another collection, present an adapted version as our work, or remove this attribution.

Disclaimer

This resource is a general template published for general information. It must be adapted to the premises it is used in.

It is not legal advice and it is not premises-specific professional advice. It does not replace a competent fire risk assessment, professional fire-engineering advice, a fire door survey, or the statutory inspection, testing and maintenance your premises require. 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.

A complete logbook is a record of activity, not evidence of compliance. It does not determine what the premises requires; that comes from the fire risk assessment and the design of the systems installed. Where defects are identified or compliance is uncertain, advice should be obtained from a suitably competent person.