Most coverage of Regulation 10 focuses on the inspection rules: quarterly checks of communal fire doors, annual checks of flat entrance doors. Those duties are important, but they are not the whole regulation. Sitting alongside them is a second duty that applies far more widely and is just as enforceable: the duty to give residents information about fire doors.
It is the part of Regulation 10 most often missed, partly because it applies to buildings that never need the quarterly checks at all. This article explains who the information duty covers, what residents must be told, how often, and why it does real work for fire safety rather than just satisfying a legal box.
Regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 came into force on 23 January 2023. It contains two distinct fire door obligations for the Responsible Person of a multi-occupied residential building.
The first is the checking duty. In buildings with a storey over 11 metres, the Responsible Person must carry out checks of communal fire doors at least quarterly, and use best endeavours to check flat entrance doors at least annually. This is the duty most articles describe, and it is the one tied to building height.
The second is the information duty. The Responsible Person must provide residents with information about fire doors. Crucially, this duty is not limited by height. It applies to every multi-occupied residential building with two or more sets of domestic premises.
Because there is no height threshold, the information duty reaches buildings that fall entirely outside the quarterly checking regime. A two-storey converted house split into two flats with a shared hallway is in scope, even though it will never need a quarterly communal door check. The same goes for low-rise blocks, sheltered schemes, and small purpose-built developments.
The duty rests with the Responsible Person, as defined by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005: broadly the employer, the person in control of the premises in connection with a trade or business, or the owner. If you are unsure whether that is you, our guide on who the Responsible Person is walks through the hierarchy.
The information has to help residents understand how fire doors protect them and what their part is in keeping them effective. In practice it should make three things clear:
It should also be clear that maintaining the fire doors remains the Responsible Person's job, not the resident's. The aim is to enlist residents as careful users and early reporters, not to shift the maintenance duty onto them. Flat entrance doors sit at the boundary of this, and our article on flat entrance fire doors covers the shared-responsibility picture in more detail.
The information must be given to new residents when they move in, and to all residents at least every 12 months. New occupants should not have to wait for the annual cycle to learn the basics.
The regulations do not prescribe a format, which gives you room to choose what works for your building. Common approaches include a welcome pack or tenancy handbook for new residents, an annual letter or email, and clear notices in communal lobbies and stairwells. Whatever you choose, keep the language plain and make sure it is accessible to everyone, including residents who do not read English easily or who have sensory impairments.
It is tempting to treat this as paperwork, but the information duty does something the checking duty cannot. Quarterly and annual checks are snapshots. Between those snapshots, the people living with the doors every day are the ones who notice a closer that has stopped pulling the door shut, a latch that no longer catches, or a door that has been propped for convenience.
A fire door that is wedged open or no longer closes properly breaks the compartmentation the building relies on to hold back smoke and fire. Our explainer on fire stopping and compartmentation shows how a single defeated door undermines the wider strategy. Residents who understand this, and who know who to tell, become an early-warning system that runs all year round.
Because this is a legal duty, you need to be able to show you have met it: what information you provided, to whom, and when. A vague recollection that "we put a notice up at some point" is not a defence if a fire and rescue authority asks. This is general guidance rather than legal advice, but the practical takeaway is consistent: keep a dated record of every communication.
This record-keeping sits within the broader expectation to hold accurate, current safety information, and for higher-risk buildings it forms part of the golden thread. Our article on what the golden thread is explains how that fits together.
DoorTRACE keeps your fire door records and the evidence that supports them in one auditable place, so demonstrating compliance is a matter of pulling a report rather than reconstructing a paper trail. Resident-reported faults can be logged against the exact door and tracked through to remedial completion, and branded reports give Responsible Persons a clear, dated record to share. To see how it would work for your buildings, take a look at the platform or get in touch.
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