From the Fire Safety Order to today: the fire safety law timeline
If you manage buildings, fire safety law can feel like a stack of Acts, Orders and Regulations that landed on your desk in no particular order. In fact it is a sequence, and each step was a response to what came before. Seen as a story rather than a filing cabinet, it becomes much easier to understand, and much easier to explain to a board or a client. Here is how we got to where we are.
2005: the Fire Safety Order sets the foundation
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which came into force in 2006, is the bedrock of the current system. It swept away a patchwork of older fire certificates and put a single, risk-based duty in their place. Someone, the Responsible Person, has to assess the fire risk in a building's non-domestic and common parts and manage it. Most of what follows is built on top of this idea rather than replacing it. Two decades on, the Order is still the backbone.
2017 onwards: the system is found wanting
The years after 2017 exposed serious gaps in how tall residential buildings were designed, built and managed, particularly around external walls and the assumptions behind them. The detail of that period is beyond the scope of a short piece, but the effect on the law is the important part. It triggered the most significant overhaul of building and fire safety regulation in a generation, and everything that follows on this timeline flows from it.
2021: the Fire Safety Act closes a gap
The Fire Safety Act 2021 clarified something the 2005 Order had left ambiguous. It confirmed that the Responsible Person's duty covers the building's structure, external walls and flat entrance doors in multi-occupied residential buildings. That mattered, because it put beyond doubt that the very things at the centre of recent concern were squarely within the scope of the fire risk assessment.
2022: two major laws arrive
Two big pieces landed in 2022. The Building Safety Act 2022 created a whole new regime for higher-risk buildings, introducing the Building Safety Regulator, the concept of the Accountable Person, the safety case, and the gateway system for design and construction. In parallel, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 were made, turning broad duties into specific, checkable tasks.
2023: the specifics take effect
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 came into force in January 2023. This is where the general duty to manage risk became a concrete list. Quarterly fire door checks in the common parts of buildings over 11 metres. Annual flat entrance door checks. Secure information boxes, wayfinding signage and monthly equipment checks in high-rise buildings. Fire safety instructions for residents in every building with two or more flats. For the first time, the Order's principle came with a schedule.
2026: the regime matures
By 2026 the framework is bedding in and shifting from being written to being enforced. The Building Safety Regulator has become an independent body, its decision times on remediation and new higher-risk buildings are improving, and its attention is turning to the buildings that are not keeping pace. The direction of travel is clear. The rules now exist. The phase we are in is about proving you are following them.
Why the timeline helps
Reading the law as a sequence does two useful things. It shows you that nothing here is arbitrary. Each layer answers a real problem the last one left open. And it shows you where your own building sits. A building below 11 metres lives mostly in the world of the 2005 Order. A building over 11 metres picks up the 2022 Regulations. A higher-risk building carries the full weight of the Building Safety Act on top. Knowing which chapters of the story apply to you is the fastest way to cut a daunting subject down to size.
That is a large part of what we do at OmniFire. Not reciting the law, but translating it into the specific duties that apply to your specific building, so you can act on the right things with confidence. And because we sell no remedial works, that translation is shaped by your building, not by what we stand to earn from the answer.
If you would find it useful to understand exactly where your building sits in all of this, get in touch and I will talk you through it: s.coogan@omnifire.co.uk