Fire safety responsibilities: understanding the Responsible Person duty

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is the primary piece of fire safety legislation for non-domestic premises and the common parts of residential buildings in England and Wales. At the centre of it is a single defined role — the Responsible Person — who carries specific legal duties. Understanding whether you are the Responsible Person for a given building, and what that actually requires of you, is the starting point for fire safety compliance.

Who is the Responsible Person

The RRO defines the Responsible Person as the employer, if the workplace is to any extent under their control, or otherwise the person who has control of the premises in connection with their trade, business or other undertaking — for example an owner or a managing agent. For the common parts of a residential building containing two or more sets of domestic premises, the Responsible Person is typically the landlord, freeholder, or managing agent responsible for those shared areas. There can be more than one Responsible Person for the same premises where responsibilities are shared, and each has to cooperate with the others.

The core duties

The Responsible Person's duties include carrying out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment and keeping it under review; putting in place and maintaining appropriate fire precautions, based on the findings of that assessment; providing and maintaining fire-fighting equipment, fire detection and warning systems as appropriate to the risk; ensuring routes to emergency exits and the exits themselves are kept clear and available for use at all times; providing staff (or, in residential settings, relevant persons) with clear information, and where appropriate training, on the fire precautions in place; and keeping records of the assessment and the actions taken, in a form that's proportionate to the size and complexity of the premises.

What "suitable and sufficient" actually means

The RRO doesn't specify a rigid checklist — it requires the fire risk assessment to be suitable and sufficient for the specific premises, which is a proportionate rather than one-size-fits-all standard. A small single-occupancy office and a large residential block with vulnerable occupants will reasonably require different depths of assessment. This is precisely why PAS 79's structured methodology exists — it gives assessors a consistent framework for judging what "suitable and sufficient" looks like for a given building, rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Enforcement and consequences

Fire and rescue authorities enforce the RRO, and have powers ranging from an informal notice through to enforcement notices, prohibition notices restricting or preventing use of a premises, and prosecution for serious or persistent non-compliance. Beyond the legal exposure, an out-of-date or absent fire risk assessment is also a significant practical risk if a fire does occur — both to the people in the building and to whoever held the Responsible Person duty.

Making the duty manageable

For many Responsible Persons, particularly managing agents overseeing a portfolio of buildings, the practical challenge isn't understanding the duty in principle — it's keeping every building's assessment current, every action tracked, and every review date met, all at once. That's the gap that ongoing compliance management is designed to close, turning a legal duty into a manageable, auditable process rather than something that has to be reconstructed from scratch each time it's queried.