What happens during a fire door inspection

If you are a Responsible Person, building manager or landlord, you have probably arranged a fire door inspection without ever seeing one happen. The inspector arrives, disappears into the building for a few hours, and a report lands in your inbox a few days later. What goes on in between can feel like a black box.

This guide walks through a typical inspection visit from start to finish: what the inspector does at each door, how long it takes, what you should have ready, and what happens once the visit is over.

Before the visit

A good inspection starts before anyone touches a door. The inspector (or the company arranging the work) will usually ask for:

• A door schedule or register. A list of the fire doors in the building, their locations and, ideally, their ratings. If you keep a fire door register, this is where it earns its keep. If you do not have one, the first visit often doubles as a survey to build it.
• Access arrangements. Communal doors are straightforward, but flat entrance doors need resident cooperation. Expect the inspector or managing agent to notify residents in advance, and expect some doors to be inaccessible on the day. Under Regulation 10, flat entrance door checks are carried out on a best endeavours basis, so refusals and no-answers should be recorded rather than ignored.
• Previous reports. Past inspection results and outstanding defects give the inspector a head start and let them verify whether earlier remedial work was actually done.

It is also worth asking who is turning up. Fire door inspection is not a licensed activity, so competence varies. Our guide to choosing a competent fire door inspector covers what to look for.

Arrival and orientation

On arrival the inspector will typically sign in, confirm the scope of the visit (which blocks, which floors, which door types) and walk the building briefly to get oriented. In larger buildings they will often work floor by floor from the top down or bottom up, ticking doors off against the schedule so nothing gets missed.

Each door is identified against the register. This is where labelling pays off: buildings with tagged doors, whether numbered discs or QR codes, get inspected faster and with fewer identification errors than buildings where the schedule says "corridor door near lift" and there are three of them.

What the inspector checks at each door

A fire door only works as a complete assembly: leaf, frame, seals, hardware and glazing all tested together. So the inspection works through the whole assembly, not just the slab of the door. A typical check covers:

• Certification and identification. Is there evidence the door is a fire door at all? A certification label or plug on the top edge, or documentation linking the door to its certificate. Our guide on how to spot a certified fire door explains what these marks look like.
• The door leaf. Damage, warping, holes, unauthorised modifications such as cat flaps or extra vents, and anything that breaches the leaf.
• The frame. Secure fixing, condition, and intact fire stopping between the frame and the surrounding wall.
• Gaps. The gap between the leaf and frame is measured around the full perimeter, commonly with a gap gauge. Guidance typically cites around 2 to 4mm at the perimeter (3mm is often the ideal) and up to 8mm at the threshold for doors without a threshold seal, but the door's own certification and the manufacturer's instructions always take precedence. See fire door gaps explained for the detail.
• Intumescent and smoke seals. Present on the required edges, continuous, undamaged and not painted over. On doors rated with an S suffix, cold smoke seals are checked too. More in our guide to intumescent and smoke seals.
• The self-closing device. The door must close fully and latch from any open position, at a controlled speed, with no wedges or improvised hold-open devices. Where hold-open devices are fitted, they should release on the fire alarm. See self-closing devices and hold-open devices.
• Hinges and hardware. Correct number of hinges, all screws present and tight, fire-rated ironmongery compatible with the door's certification, and letterplates that are fire-rated and close properly.
• Glazing. Where the door has a vision panel, the glass must be fire-rated with intact beads and seals.
• Signage. The right sign for the door type, legible and in place. Covered in fire door signage requirements.

For each item the inspector records a result, takes photographs (particularly of defects) and notes measurements where relevant. A full checklist of what gets covered is in our fire door inspection checklist.

How long does it take?

A thorough inspection of a single door typically takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the door's condition, how much needs photographing and whether the door is already registered. A first survey visit takes longer per door than a routine re-inspection, because every door has to be identified, recorded and often tagged.

For planning purposes, an inspector working steadily through a building might cover 25 to 40 doors in a day. Buildings with poor access, locked risers or unresponsive residents will come in lower.

Common findings

Most inspections find something. The defects that come up again and again are gaps outside tolerance, damaged or painted-over seals, closers that do not fully close the door, missing signage, and non-fire-rated hardware fitted during previous maintenance. We cover these in common fire door defects, and what a fail actually means in failing a fire door inspection.

A finding is not a crisis. It is an actionable item: the report should tell you what is wrong, how serious it is, and what the remedial action is. The important thing is that findings get logged, prioritised, fixed and then verified, with evidence at each stage.

After the visit: the report and the follow-up

Once the visit is complete, the inspector compiles the results into a report. A good report includes door-by-door results, photographs of defects, a defect register with priorities and recommended actions, and a clear statement of when the next inspection is due.

What happens next counts as much as the inspection itself. The report should feed directly into your maintenance process: defects assigned, remedial work carried out, and a follow-up check to verify the fix. Reports and records also form part of your compliance evidence under the Fire Safety Order and, for higher-risk buildings, the golden thread. If your records are still arriving as PDFs that get filed and forgotten, our article on paper vs digital fire door records explains why that is a risk.

Finally, remember the distinction between routine checks and formal inspections: Regulation 10 checks carried out by your own staff are not the same as a competent inspection of the full assembly. We break down the difference in fire door checks vs inspections. Inspection standards for door assemblies are set out in BS 8214, updated in 2026 to cover more than timber doorsets.

How DoorTRACE helps

DoorTRACE turns the inspection visit into structured digital records from the moment the engineer scans the door's QR tag. The engineer app guides the inspector through every checklist item with photos and measurements captured against the door, and reports are generated automatically, with every defect tracked through to verified resolution in the portal. If you want to see a full inspection workflow end to end, get in touch.