Is the fire door sector actually changing four years on from the Building Safety Act 2022? New research from the British Woodworking Federation (BWF) Fire Door Alliance, published on 8 July 2026, suggests the answer is yes, but not evenly. Awareness of third-party certification and the importance of traceability is rising across the people who specify, install and maintain fire doors. Yet the same research finds that specification decisions and, in particular, judgements about competence have not caught up with that awareness.
This article looks at what the report found, why the competence findings deserve the most attention, and what Responsible Persons and Accountable Persons should take from it.
The report, titled Competence, certification and compliance: How the Building Safety Act 2022 is reshaping fire door safety, surveyed professionals responsible for specifying, installing and maintaining fire doors. The headline picture is one of a sector moving in the right direction: more of these professionals now recognise the value of third-party certification (TPC) and of being able to trace a fire door back to its manufacture and test evidence.
The numbers show how far there is still to go. On average, respondents said that just over half (54%) of the fire doors they specify or are responsible for are third-party certified. A similar proportion (54%) said they choose TPC doors specifically to meet their fire safety duties and comply with rules and guidance.
When asked what holds back wider use of certified doors, respondents pointed to cost, followed by the availability of certified and competent installers (28%), uncertainty over what data is needed to evidence performance (27%), and a lack of client demand (25%). That last figure is telling: a quarter of professionals say the end client is simply not asking for certified doors, which suggests that many building owners and Responsible Persons do not yet understand the role certification plays in evidencing compliance.
The most striking findings sit in the section on competence, which the research examines for the first time. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, competence is central: the duties placed on Accountable Persons assume that the people installing, inspecting and maintaining safety-critical products know what they are doing and can prove it.
The research suggests that proof is often thin. While around half of respondents (51%) said they review installer qualifications against the Industry Competence Steering Group's specialist timber fire door installer competence framework (known as SLG10), and 45% look for an NVQ or apprenticeship, a large minority rely on much weaker evidence. Some 42% said they would accept a diploma or certificate of achievement on its own, and 29% would accept an online or e-learning course alone as sufficient proof of competence.
The gap is serious because a fire door is only as good as its installation and upkeep. A robustly tested, third-party certified door can still fail in a real fire if it is fitted badly, or if defects go unnoticed and unrepaired. An attendance certificate from a short online course tells you someone sat through the material. It does not tell you they can hang a fire door so it performs as tested, or inspect one and recognise what is wrong with it.
There is a second thread running through the research that deserves attention: uncertainty over the data needed to evidence performance. More than a quarter of respondents said they are unsure what information they should hold to demonstrate that a fire door will do its job.
The answer has two halves. Third-party certification proves the door as it left the factory: it shows the design was tested, the manufacturing process is audited, and the door can be traced back to its test evidence through its label and unique identifier. But certification is a snapshot. It says nothing about the years that follow: the inspections, the wear and tear, the defects found and fixed, the components replaced.
That ongoing story is exactly what the golden thread principle demands: accurate, current, accessible records covering a safety-critical product across its whole service life. A certified door with no inspection history is only half an evidence trail. For duty holders, the practical lesson from this research is to treat certification and record-keeping as two parts of the same obligation, not alternatives.
Three practical points follow from the findings:
The gap this research identifies, between awareness and evidence, is the gap DoorTRACE was built to close. Every door on the platform carries its certification details, inspection history, defect record and remedial evidence in one traceable digital record, tied to a unique QR identity on the door itself. That gives Responsible Persons and the FM companies they work with a service-life evidence trail, not just a point-of-sale certificate. Get in touch to see how it works.
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