The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 sit under the fire safety order and add specific, named duties for buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises. They came out of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommendations, and their character is different from the order itself: where the order asks for what is appropriate, these regulations state exactly what must be done and how often.
Duties in all buildings with two or more domestic premises
Fire safety instructions have to be provided to residents, covering the evacuation strategy for the building and how to report a fire. Information about fire doors has to be given to residents, explaining that fire doors should be kept shut, should not be altered, and that any faults should be reported. Both are repeated periodically and given to new residents.
Duties in buildings above eleven metres
Fire doors in common parts and flat entrance doors become subject to a regular check regime, with the frequency differing between the two. The checks are a visual inspection for the things that stop a door working: gaps, seals, closers, glazing and damage. The record of them is what evidences the duty.
Duties in high rise residential buildings
The heaviest set applies to buildings above eighteen metres or with at least seven storeys. Electronic building plans and information about the external wall construction go to the fire and rescue service. A secure information box is installed on site. Lifts and other firefighting equipment are checked monthly and faults reported. Wayfinding signage is installed in the stairwells so that a crew can identify floors in smoke.
What this means in practice for a responsible person
A schedule rather than a judgement. Each duty has a named frequency and a named output, and the evidence is the record that it happened on the days it should have. That is a different management task from the order's general duties, and it is the one enforcing authorities have found easiest to check.
Fire regulations for holiday lets, which are not the 2022 ones
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 are about blocks of flats and the information a responsible person has to provide in them, so a cottage or a flat let to guests is not covered by them and looking there for the rules is why people conclude there are none. The regime that does apply is the fire safety order, because a holiday let with paying guests is non domestic premises for those purposes: the owner is the responsible person, a fire risk assessment is required and must be recorded, and the practical outputs are a working detection and alarm system appropriate to the layout, clear escape routes, fire doors where the risk assessment calls for them, instructions for guests who do not know the building, and maintenance records. Scotland and Wales run their own versions with their own paperwork. The three things that most often fail an inspection of a small let are a detection system that does not cover the sleeping risk, a locked or obstructed final exit, and no record of the assessment at all.
Questions people ask about fire regulations 2022
Do the 2022 regulations apply outside England?
No. They are England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regimes, and the equivalent duties differ.
Do they apply to a converted house with two flats?
The all buildings duties apply where there are two or more sets of domestic premises, so a two flat conversion is in scope for the residents information duties.
What if a building is just under a height threshold?
The specific duties for that tier do not apply, and the general duties under the fire safety order still do. Height thresholds switch on named obligations; they do not switch off the requirement to assess and act.
What do the fire door safety checks require?
In a building with two or more sets of domestic premises above eleven metres, quarterly checks of common part doors and an annual check of flat entrance doors, both recorded. Below that height the interval comes from the building's own fire risk assessment.