On 3 July 2026, the government updated one of its central fire safety documents: the GOV.UK guidance titled Fire Safety Order: enforcement and sanctions for non-compliance. The update does two things. It moves ownership of the guidance to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and it adds new material explaining Secretary of State determinations, a mechanism for resolving disagreements between Responsible Persons and enforcing authorities.
No new legal duties have been created. But guidance updates like this one are worth paying attention to, because they signal where the government wants enforcement attention to sit and they remind duty holders how the system actually works when things go wrong. This article walks through what changed, how Fire Safety Order enforcement operates in practice, what the new determinations guidance covers, and what all of it means for the records you keep.
One caveat before we start: this article is general information, not legal advice. If you are facing enforcement action, speak to a fire safety professional or a solicitor.
The guidance itself was first published in September 2023. It is issued by the Secretary of State under Article 50 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which means it exists specifically to help Responsible Persons understand and meet their duties.
The July 2026 update makes two changes:
Everything else in the guidance, including the enforcement ladder and the sanctions available, remains as it was. But since most Responsible Persons have never read it, the update is a good excuse to cover what it says.
For the vast majority of premises, the enforcing authority is the local fire and rescue authority. A few building types sit elsewhere: construction sites that are not part of an occupied building fall to the Health and Safety Executive, armed forces sites to the Defence Fire Safety Regulator, and government-occupied buildings to the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate.
Enforcement happens through audits. An inspecting officer visits the premises, examines part or all of the building, and reviews the fire safety records: the fire risk assessment, and the records of testing and maintenance of fire protection measures. Fire doors sit squarely in that second category. If your building is subject to Regulation 10 quarterly and annual door checks, the evidence of those checks is exactly the kind of documentation an auditor will ask to see.
Inspectors have significant powers. They can enter premises at any reasonable time, require records to be produced, ask questions to establish who the Responsible Person is, and take items away for testing where necessary. You are entitled to ask for their identification and written authorisation, and they must provide it.
The guidance sets out a graduated approach. Enforcing authorities are expected to act in line with the Regulators' Code, which means enforcement should be proportionate to risk and aimed at encouraging compliance rather than punishing for its own sake. In practice, that produces a ladder with four rungs.
Verbal advice. For a small number of minor, low-risk breaches, particularly where the Responsible Person is clearly making best endeavours to comply, the officer may simply give verbal advice and expect it to be acted on.
Non-statutory notices. For more significant breaches that do not place occupants at serious risk, the authority may issue a written notice, sometimes called a Letter of Fire Safety Matters or a Notification of Fire Safety Deficiencies. These list each breach against the relevant Article or Regulation, describe it, and suggest remedial action. There is no offence of ignoring one, but failing to act on it can be used as evidence in a later prosecution and treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing. It is a warning shot, and it should be treated as one.
Statutory notices. There are three types. An enforcement notice requires remedial action within a set timescale of at least 28 days. A prohibition notice, the most serious, restricts or stops the use of premises where people would otherwise be at serious risk, and normally takes immediate effect. An alterations notice applies to high-risk premises and requires the Responsible Person to notify the authority before making changes that could affect fire safety. Statutory notices go on a public register, and failing to comply with one is a specific criminal offence in its own right. Appeals go to the magistrates' court within 21 days; an appeal suspends the notice, except for prohibition notices, which stay in force unless the court directs otherwise.
Prosecution. For breaches serious enough to expose people to risk of death or serious injury, or for failure to comply with a statutory notice, the authority can prosecute. The maximum penalty is an unlimited fine in the magistrates' court, or an unlimited fine and up to two years' imprisonment at the Crown Court. Individuals, not just companies, can be prosecuted: company officers whose neglect or consent led to the offence, managers with contractual responsibility for fire precautions, and sole traders are all within reach. We covered the sanctions side in more depth in our article on the penalties for fire door non-compliance.
The addition in the July 2026 update deals with a specific and awkward situation: the enforcing authority and the Responsible Person agree that remedial action is needed, but they cannot agree on the technical measures required to achieve it.
Rather than letting that disagreement escalate straight into a statutory notice and a court appeal, the dispute can be referred to the Secretary of State for a determination. The Secretary of State then decides the question of technical measures, giving both sides a resolution route that does not depend on litigation.
For Responsible Persons this is significant for two reasons. First, it is a reminder that receiving informal enforcement correspondence is not the end of the conversation: where there is a genuine technical disagreement about what compliance looks like, there is a defined mechanism for resolving it. Second, a determination only helps you if you can evidence your side of the technical argument. A Responsible Person who can show a documented history of inspections, defect decisions and remedial work, with dates and photographs, is in a far stronger position to make a technical case than one working from memory and a folder of loose paperwork.
One of the most practically useful parts of the guidance is the list of factors an authority considers when deciding what enforcement action to take. These include previous breaches by the same Responsible Person, evidence of best endeavours to comply, whether breaches were inadvertent or a deliberate attempt to save money, the general state of fire precautions in the building, and how cooperative the Responsible Person has been.
Read that list again with your record-keeping in mind. Almost every factor turns on what you can demonstrate. Best endeavours are shown through documented inspection regimes and prompt, recorded responses to defects. Cooperation is shown by producing records quickly when asked. The difference between an inadvertent breach and an apparent disregard for the law often comes down to whether there is a paper trail showing you were actively managing the risk. A complete fire door register with a dated inspection history is not just good practice; it directly shapes which rung of the enforcement ladder you land on.
Nothing in this update requires a change to your legal duties, but it is a sensible prompt to check three things. First, that your inspection regime matches your building's requirements under the Fire Safety Order and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. Second, that the evidence of that regime is complete, dated and retrievable, because an audit can happen at any reasonable time and the records are the first thing examined. Third, that defects found during inspections are tracked through to resolution with evidence of the remedial work, since an open defect with no documented action plan is exactly the kind of finding that moves an authority from advice towards notices. If your records are still spread across spreadsheets and site folders, our comparison of paper versus digital fire door records explains why that gap hurts at audit time.
Enforcement outcomes are shaped by evidence, and DoorTRACE is built to produce it. Every door, every inspection, every defect and every remedial action is recorded with dates, photographs and a full audit trail, so when an enforcing authority asks for your fire door records, the answer is an export rather than a scramble. See the platform, see how reports and the audit trail work, or get in touch to see it against your own portfolio.
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