Fire Safety Legislation: What's Changed and What's Coming

Published 2026-06-11 · Black Mountain Fire Safety

Fire safety law has changed more in the last five years than in the previous thirty, and the pace is not slowing. For building owners, landlords and employers in Wales, keeping up matters — not least because some of the most significant changes now coming are Wales-specific. Here is a plain-English summary of where things stand and what is on the horizon.

The Fire Safety Act 2021

The Fire Safety Act clarified that, in buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises, the Fire Safety Order applies to the building's structure and external walls — including cladding, balconies and windows — and to flat entrance doors. In Wales these provisions commenced on 1 October 2021. For anyone responsible for a block of flats or a converted building, this put beyond doubt that external wall systems and flat front doors must be covered by the fire risk assessment.

Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022

From 1 October 2023, every Responsible Person — regardless of premises size — must record their fire risk assessment in full, document their fire safety arrangements, record the identity of anyone appointed to carry out the assessment, cooperate and share information with other Responsible Persons, and provide fire safety information to residents in buildings with two or more domestic premises. The old five-employee threshold for written assessments is gone. A further provision — that any appointed fire risk assessor must be competent — remains on the statute book awaiting commencement, with BS 8674:2025 now defining the competence framework the industry is aligning to.

A note on the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022

The widely publicised 2022 Regulations — quarterly fire door checks in buildings over 11 metres, information duties for high-rise buildings and so on — apply in England only. Wales has deliberately taken its own path, and Welsh duty-holders should be careful when reading guidance written for an English audience. That said, many of the practices the English regulations formalised — routine fire door checking chief among them — represent good practice that Welsh fire risk assessors will expect to see in any well-managed building.

Wales-specific requirements already in force

• Sprinklers in new homes — Wales has required automatic fire suppression in all new and converted dwellings since 2016, under the Domestic Fire Safety (Wales) Measure 2011. No equivalent exists in England.
• The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2022 — since December 2022, rented homes in Wales must have hard-wired, interlinked smoke alarms on every storey and carbon monoxide alarms in any room with a gas, oil or solid fuel appliance, as part of the fitness for human habitation requirements.
• Updated holiday let guidance — the Home Office's October 2023 guidance for small paying-guest accommodation made expectations for holiday lets, B&Bs and short-term rentals clearer than ever, and Welsh fire and rescue services actively enforce in this sector.

Updated standards

Several of the standards underpinning fire risk assessment and building design have been refreshed: BS 9991:2024 (fire safety in residential building design) introduced significant changes including tighter expectations around single-stair buildings and sprinkler provision; BS 9792:2025 replaced PAS 79-2 as the code of practice for fire risk assessment of housing; and BS 8674:2025 established the national competence framework for fire risk assessors. PAS 79-1:2020 remains the methodology of choice for non-domestic premises.

What's coming: the Building Safety (Wales) Bill

The most significant development for Wales is the Building Safety (Wales) Bill, introduced to the Senedd in July 2025 and in the final stages of its passage at the time of writing. It will create a new safety regime for multi-occupied residential buildings in Wales — in time largely replacing the Fire Safety Order for residential buildings that are not also workplaces. Key features include:

• Buildings categorised by height: Category 1 (18m+ or 7+ storeys), Category 2 (11–18m), and Category 3 below that — with duties scaled accordingly;
• A new Accountable Person role (typically the owner or landlord) with a duty to take all appropriate steps to reduce fire risk;
• A requirement that fire risk assessments of these buildings be carried out only by demonstrably competent assessors;
• Structural safety assessments for Category 1 and 2 buildings;
• Wales's three fire and rescue services acting as Fire Safety Authorities.

Separately, the Building (Higher-Risk Buildings Procedures) (Wales) Regulations 2025 bring a new gateway-style building control regime for higher-risk buildings in Wales into force from 1 July 2026 — affecting anyone designing, building or substantially altering taller residential buildings.

What should you do now?

Three things. First, make sure your fire risk assessment is current, recorded in full, and genuinely suitable and sufficient — that is already the law for everyone. Second, if you own or manage multi-occupied residential buildings in Wales, start preparing for the new regime now: understand your likely category, get your documentation in order, and address known deficiencies before the new enforcement framework arrives. Third, use competent assessors — the legal requirement is coming, and insurers and enforcing authorities already expect it.