Fire Risk Assessments for Landlords and HMOs

The issues that come up most

HMOs combine every difficult factor at once: people asleep, an escape route shared with strangers, cooking facilities on or near that escape route, and occupants who often have no relationship with each other or with the building. Licensing conditions add a further layer, and local authority standards vary between councils.

The fire risk assessment has to work alongside the licensing requirements rather than duplicate them, and it has to be honest about the detection category the building actually needs — which in most HMOs means a mixed system rather than the standalone alarms that were fitted when the property was converted.