If you are responsible for a building, one of the first questions you will face is simple to ask and surprisingly easy to get wrong: how often do the fire doors need to be inspected?
The short answer for many residential buildings is set out in law. Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, buildings with storeys above 11 metres in height have a fixed minimum schedule. Communal fire doors must be checked at least every three months, and flat entrance doors at least once a year. For buildings below that height, there is no statutory frequency, but the general duties under the Fire Safety Order still apply, and a sensible inspection routine is expected.
This article explains where those frequencies come from, who they fall on, and what separates a quick visual check from a full inspection.
Regulation 10 applies to multi-occupied residential buildings in England with storeys over 11 metres tall, measured to the floor of the top storey. For those buildings, the Responsible Person must:
The wording matters. The duty for communal doors is firm. The duty for flat entrance doors is to use best endeavours, recognising that the Responsible Person does not always control access to a private flat. If a resident does not grant access, the obligation is to keep trying and to keep a record of those attempts.
Regulation 10 also requires that residents in all multi-occupied residential buildings, regardless of height, are given information about the importance of fire doors to a building's fire safety. That includes not tampering with self-closing devices and reporting any faults they notice.
The split reflects how doors are used and who uses them. Communal doors in corridors, lobbies and stairwells take constant traffic, get propped open, knocked by trolleys, and worn at the closer and seals. Three months is frequent enough to catch developing faults before they compromise a protected escape route.
Flat entrance doors are used by far fewer people and tend to degrade more slowly, which is why an annual check is considered proportionate.
If your building sits at or below 11 metres, Regulation 10's fixed frequencies do not apply. That does not mean fire doors can be ignored. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 still requires the Responsible Person to keep fire safety measures, including fire doors, in efficient working order and in good repair. A risk-based inspection routine, often quarterly or six-monthly for higher-traffic doors and annually for the rest, is the practical way to meet that duty and to show you have done so.
A Regulation 10 check is a visual inspection that anyone competent can be trained to carry out. It typically looks at:
A more detailed inspection, the kind carried out periodically by a competent inspector against BS 8214, goes further, examining hinges, the closer mechanism, certification and fixings. Both have their place. Frequent simple checks catch the obvious problems early, and deeper inspections confirm the door assembly as a whole still performs as certified.
Whatever frequency applies to your building, the value of an inspection is only as good as the record behind it. Dates, results, photographs, defects raised and remedial actions all need to be captured and retained, both to demonstrate compliance and to support the golden thread of building safety information.
DoorTRACE schedules every door to its correct frequency automatically, three monthly for communal doors and annually for flat entrance doors, and flags anything overdue before it becomes a problem. Inspectors record each check on the engineer app, with photos and timestamps, and the results flow straight into a branded report and an auditable history. If you would like to see how that works for your portfolio, get in touch.
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