Fire Risk Assessment for Schools in Nottingham

Primary, secondary, academies, sixth form colleges, nurseries and special schools. Assessed against the Fire Safety Order and the Government’s educational premises guidance, with BB100 as the design benchmark.

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✓ Term-time or holiday visits✓ DBS-checked assessors✓ PEEPs for pupils and staff✓ Written report in 5 days

Who Is Responsible in a School?

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the responsible person is the employer. In a community school that is usually the local authority; in an academy or free school it is the trust; in an independent school it is the proprietor or governing body. In practice the duty is discharged day to day by a named fire safety manager, often the business manager or site manager.

This split causes real problems. We regularly find schools where everyone assumes someone else holds the assessment. If your school converted to academy status, the responsibility moved with it, and an assessment carried out for the county council before conversion may no longer reflect who is accountable or what the building now looks like.

The guidance schools are actually assessed againstBuilding Bulletin 100 is design guidance for people constructing or refurbishing schools, and it is non-statutory. For an existing school, the document that matters is the Government’s Fire Safety Risk Assessment: Educational Premises guide, read alongside the Fire Safety Order and the School Premises (England) Regulations 2012. An assessor who only cites BB100 is quoting the wrong document at you.

The scale of the problem is not trivial. The Local Government Association has put the figure at over 1,500 fires a year in UK schools and other educational establishments. Most are small. The ones that are not tend to close a school for months.

What We Assess in a School

✓Means of escape from every teaching space, including travel distances and whether escape is one-directional
✓Protected corridors and stairways, and the condition of every door onto them
✓Fire detection and alarm coverage, zoning, and audibility in noisy spaces such as sports halls and workshops
✓Science laboratories – gas isolation, chemical storage, fume cupboards
✓Design and technology workshops – dust extraction, hot works, machine guarding
✓Art rooms and kilns – siting, ventilation, out-of-hours firing
✓Catering kitchens – extraction canopy cleaning, deep fat fryers, suppression systems
✓Boarding accommodation where present, which is sleeping risk and changes the assessment entirely
✓Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans for pupils and staff with mobility, sensory or cognitive needs
✓Temporary and modular classrooms, which are frequently missed in older assessments
✓Arson risk – perimeter security, external bin storage, out-of-hours access
✓Evacuation procedure, drill records, assembly points and roll-call arrangements

Arson is the school-specific riskA significant share of serious school fires start outside the building and out of hours. Wheelie bins stored against a wall, stacked pallets, and unsecured external stores are the classic findings. This is the one area where a cheap assessment most often says nothing at all.

Escape Routes and the Single-Exit Problem

The most consequential finding in most school assessments is not detection or extinguishers. It is whether a classroom wing has escape available in two directions, or whether everyone depends on one route.

Nottingham’s School Estate

Nottingham has an unusually mixed school stock, and the mix matters because the findings differ sharply by building age.

Victorian board schools

Tall, solid, often three storeys with a central hall and a single main staircase per wing. Generous room sizes but frequently limited alternative escape, and original joinery that cannot simply be replaced where the building is listed or in a conservation area.

Post-war system build

Single-storey blocks with long corridors, lightweight partitions and concealed voids above suspended ceilings. Compartmentation is often compromised by decades of cabling and IT upgrades run through ceiling voids without fire-stopping.

Modern academies

Open-plan atria and shared learning spaces, usually well designed and sprinklered. The risk here is management rather than construction – atrium smoke control depends on systems being maintained and doors not being propped.

Temporary classrooms

Modular units added for capacity, sometimes years ago. They are often outside the original assessment, have their own detection requirements, and their siting relative to the main building matters for external fire spread.

We cover schools across the city and county, including Nottingham city, West Bridgford, Beeston, Arnold, Hucknall, Long Eaton, Mansfield and Newark. Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service inspects educational premises, and enforcement notices in schools attract attention from governors and parents very quickly.

Pricing and Scheduling

School assessments are priced on the number of buildings, floor area and whether boarding accommodation is present. All prices include the written report and PEEP framework.

School	Starting price	Notes
Nursery or pre-school	From £250	Single building
Primary school	From £350	Main building plus modulars
Secondary school	From £650	Multiple blocks, labs and workshops
Secondary with sixth form or boarding	POA	Sleeping risk assessed separately
Multi-academy trust, per school	Discounted	Contact us for trust-wide pricing

When to bookMost schools prefer assessments during INSET days or school holidays, which means those dates go first. If your review is due in the autumn term, booking in the summer term gets you a choice of dates and leaves time to act on findings before pupils return. We can also assess during term time – it is less disruptive than people expect, since most of the work is corridors, plant and external areas.

How to Spot a Bad Fire Risk Assessment

There is a pattern in this industry worth knowing about before you book anyone, including us. An assessor quotes noticeably below everyone else, spends a short time on site, and produces a report listing a long set of deficiencies. The following day an email arrives quoting for the remedial works. The assessment was never really the product.

Our position on thisWe do not sell fire doors, alarm systems, extinguishers, signage or any other remedial work. We have no financial interest in what the assessment finds. If your building is compliant, the report says so.

Warning signs worth taking seriously

!A quote given without asking about the size, layout or use of the building
!An inspection that takes twenty minutes for a large or multi-storey premises
!A report that arrives alongside, or just before, a quote for remedial works
!Findings that do not match the building, or generic wording that could describe anywhere
!Existing compliant equipment not recorded, making the premises look worse than it is
!No register number, no professional indemnity limit, no sample report offered

Six questions to ask any assessor

Ask these of us and of whoever else you are considering. A competent assessor answers all six without hesitation: their register number and tier under BS 8674:2025 and the IFSM register; their professional indemnity limit; whether you can see a sample report; whether they have assessed this building type before; whether they sell the works they recommend; and which type of assessment, Type 1 to Type 4, you are being quoted for.

Get a Free Quote

Tell us about your premises and a local assessor will get back to you with a fixed quote and available dates. No obligation.

Prefer to talk? Call 0115 647 8715 · lines are open Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Frequently Asked Questions

The employer. For a community school that is normally the local authority, for an academy or free school it is the trust, and for an independent school the proprietor or governing body. The duty is usually delegated day to day to a named fire safety manager such as the business or site manager, but legal responsibility stays with the employer.

No. BB100 is non-statutory design guidance aimed at people building or refurbishing schools. For an existing school the legal duty comes from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and the practical guidance is the Government’s Fire Safety Risk Assessment: Educational Premises document. BB100 is still a useful benchmark, but it is not the standard your assessment is judged against.

There is no fixed statutory interval, but annual review is standard practice in schools and is what inspectors and insurers expect. A review is always required after building work, the addition or removal of modular classrooms, a change in how a space is used, or any fire or near-miss.

No, though many schools prefer it. Most of the assessment covers corridors, stairways, plant rooms, kitchens, workshops and external areas, which can be inspected during term time with minimal disruption. Holiday and INSET dates book up quickly, so if you want one, ask early.

Yes. Boarding accommodation is sleeping risk, which changes the detection standard, the evacuation strategy and the staffing implications at night. It is assessed to a different benchmark than the teaching estate and should be priced and documented separately, even where it sits on the same site.