Fire Risk Assessment for Offices in Nottingham

Employer and occupier obligations under the Fire Safety Order. Open-plan offices, multi-floor buildings, serviced offices and business parks across Nottingham covered. Written report issued within five working days.

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✓ Employer obligations covered ✓ Open-plan and multi-floor offices ✓ Serviced office specialists ✓ Written report within 5 days

Office Fire Risk Assessment — Legal Requirements for Employers

As an employer or occupier of office premises in Nottingham, you are the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. You are legally required to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment — or commission one from a competent person — and to record the significant findings in writing if you employ five or more people.

Nottingham’s office stock spans the city centre around King Street, Maid Marian Way and the Lace Market, the Nottingham Business Park and Castle Marina Retail Park, through to out-of-town offices in West Bridgford, Beeston and Long Eaton. Whether you occupy a single floor of a managed building or an entire standalone premises, the obligation is the same.

Five or More Employees — Written Record Required If your workplace employs five or more people, the significant findings of the fire risk assessment must be recorded in writing. This is not optional — it is a legal requirement under Article 9(7) of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The written record must be kept and made available to Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service on request.

Office Types We Assess

Open-Plan Offices

Large open-plan floors present specific challenges — clear escape route identification, travel distance calculations, and ensuring detection coverage is adequate for the layout. We assess against the relevant fire safety guidance for business premises.

Multi-Floor Office Buildings

Multi-floor offices require assessment of stairwells, lift lobbies, structural compartmentation, and evacuation procedures for occupants on upper floors who cannot use lifts during an emergency.

Serviced and Co-Working Offices

Serviced offices and co-working spaces have a mixed and changing occupant population, which affects the fire safety strategy. We assess shared facilities, reception areas, meeting rooms and kitchenette risks.

Mixed-Use Buildings

Office premises in buildings that also contain retail, residential or hospitality uses — common in Nottingham’s Lace Market and city centre — require careful assessment of compartmentation between uses and separate escape routes.

What Our Office Fire Risk Assessment Covers

✓Means of escape — travel distances, escape routes, stairwells, final exits, door widths and direction of opening
✓Fire detection and alarm — type, coverage, call point locations, alarm audibility throughout the building
✓Emergency lighting — stairwells, escape routes, sign illumination
✓Fire suppression — sprinkler systems (where present), portable fire extinguishers (type and positioning)
✓Fire doors — condition, self-closing devices, intumescent strips, smoke seals, correct fire rating
✓Compartmentation — fire resistance between floors and between office and other uses in mixed-use buildings
✓Electrical risks — distribution boards, condition of wiring, PAT testing status, socket overloading
✓Server rooms and IT infrastructure — UPS units, cable management, overheating risk
✓Kitchenettes — appliances, extraction, combustible materials
✓Evacuation procedures — fire marshal training records, assembly points, visitors and contractors
✓Arson risk — external perimeter, accessible areas, waste storage
✓Written report and action plan — significant findings documented, risk ratings assigned, remedial actions prioritised

Office Fire Risk Assessment Pricing — Nottingham

Pricing is based on the gross internal floor area (GIA) of the premises and the number of floors. All prices include the written fire risk assessment report.

Office Size	Starting Price	Notes
Small office — up to 200 m²	From £200	Single floor, straightforward layout
Medium office — 200 to 500 m²	From £300	Written report included
Large office — 500 to 1,000 m²	From £400	Multi-room or multi-floor
Offices above 1,000 m²	POA	Quote on request
Serviced / co-working office	From £280	Shared facilities included
Multi-tenanted building (whole building)	POA	Landlord or managing agent — contact us

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, any employer or occupier of non-domestic premises is required to carry out a fire risk assessment. If you employ five or more people, the significant findings must be recorded in writing. The assessment must be carried out by a competent person — either the responsible person themselves, if they have the necessary knowledge and training, or a qualified external assessor.

There is no fixed statutory renewal period. The assessment must be reviewed whenever there is reason to believe it is no longer valid — after a significant change (a refurbishment, an increase in headcount, a change in layout), after a fire or near-miss, or if Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service issues an enforcement or improvement notice. Annual review is best practice for most offices.

In a multi-tenanted office building, responsibility is split. The landlord or building owner is responsible for common areas — reception, stairwells, corridors, plant rooms and external areas. Each tenant is responsible for their own demised area. Where a managing agent is in place, they typically act as the responsible person for common areas on the landlord’s behalf. We can assess either the whole building or individual demised areas.

The fire risk assessment will identify whether your current evacuation procedure is adequate — the number and location of fire marshals, the fire assembly point, procedures for visitors and contractors, and how evacuation is managed for staff with mobility or sensory impairments. The assessment will recommend changes if the current procedure is insufficient, but we do not run fire drills or deliver fire marshal training as part of the assessment itself — these can be arranged separately.

The Nottingham Problem Nobody Puts on a Website

There are somewhere between 450 and 800 man-made caves cut into the sandstone beneath Nottingham. Most are privately owned, many sit under commercial premises in the Lace Market, Hockley, Castle Gate and around Broad Marsh, and — this is the part that matters — not all of them are mapped.

For a fire risk assessment this is not a curiosity. A cave cellar under a commercial unit is a void with its own ventilation behaviour, often reached by a single narrow stair, sometimes connected to neighbouring properties in ways the current occupier does not know about. Historically several city-centre pubs shared one communal cave cellar. If that connection still exists and is not fire-stopped, the compartmentation line on your assessment is wrong.

Assessors who work outside the city routinely treat a Nottingham cellar as a normal basement. It often is not. We ask about cellar access before quoting, and we go down there.

What this means in practice If your premises is in the Lace Market, Hockley, Castle Gate, High Pavement or Low Pavement, expect the assessment to spend real time below ground. Storage in an unventilated sandstone cellar with a single access stair is a genuine finding, not a box-tick — and it is one of the more common things we would expect to flag on older city-centre stock.

What Actually Happens on the Day

The practical detail nobody publishes, because it is unglamorous and specific.

Do tenants need to be there?

No. For a standard Type 1 assessment we inspect communal areas — hallways, stairwells, shared kitchens, cellars, the external envelope. We do not need access to individual bedrooms for a communal-areas assessment, so nobody needs to take a day off. If a full assessment including individual rooms has been agreed, you will need to give tenants the statutory notice you would give for any other access.

What if a room is locked and nobody is in?

It gets recorded as not inspected, with the reason. That is honest, and it is better than a report that implies coverage that did not happen. If the un-inspected areas are material to the findings, we will say so and arrange a short return visit rather than guess.

What does the assessor need access to?

The consumer unit, the alarm panel if there is one, the loft hatch, the cellar, any plant or meter cupboards, and the bin store. In Nottingham the cellar matters more than most places — more on that below. If keys for any of these live with a letting agent, it is worth arranging them in advance; a locked meter cupboard is the single most common reason a visit runs long.

How long does it take?

A small HMO is usually 45 to 60 minutes on site. A 7-bed over three floors is closer to 90. A mid-sized care home is a half day. Anyone quoting twenty minutes for a multi-storey building is not doing the job properly.

When does the report arrive?

Five working days as standard. The delay is deliberate — writing a useful action plan takes longer than the inspection. If you have an enforcement deadline, say so upfront and we will work to it.

Three Things We Do Differently

We do not sell the work we recommend

No fire doors, no alarm installation, no extinguisher contracts. The assessment is the whole product, which means we have no reason to find problems that are not there. If you want the remedial work done, we will tell you what to ask for and you can put it out to tender.

We will tell you if you do not need one

Not every property requires a formal fire risk assessment. A single-let house with no communal areas does not, under the Fire Safety Order — though smoke and carbon monoxide alarm rules still apply. If you contact us about a property that does not need an assessment, we will say so rather than take the booking. It costs us a job and saves you a few hundred pounds.

We will not quote without knowing the building

A price given over the phone before anyone has asked how many floors and rooms there are is a guess, and guesses get revised upwards later. We ask about storeys, room count, cellar access and building age before quoting, and the number we give is the number you pay.

Get a Free Office Fire Risk Assessment Quote

Tell us about your premises and a local assessor will get back to you with a fixed quote and availability.

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