Fire Door Checks Under Regulation 10: How Often, What to Check and Who Is Responsible

What does Regulation 10 require?

Regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/547) came into force on 23 January 2023 and set, for the first time, fixed statutory frequencies for routine fire door checks in England's taller residential buildings. In any residential building in England that contains two or more sets of domestic premises and is over 11 metres in height, the responsible person owes two checking duties — plus a resident information duty that applies far more widely.

Regulation 10(7) adds that both types of check must include ensuring that self-closing devices are working — the failure mode most consistently identified after the Grenfell Tower fire, where flat entrance doors did not perform as intended and many self-closers were missing or broken.

Regulation 10 sits on top of a duty that already existed. Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires fire safety facilities and devices — fire doors included — to be subject to a suitable system of maintenance and kept 'in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair'. Regulation 10 defines how often that system must look at fire doors in taller residential buildings; Article 17 requires that what the checks find is actually put right.

Who is the responsible person for fire door checks?

The duties fall on the responsible person defined by Article 3 of the Fire Safety Order: in a workplace, the employer, so far as the workplace is under their control; in other premises, the person in control of the premises in connection with a trade, business or other undertaking, and otherwise the owner. In a multi-occupied residential building this is normally whoever controls the common parts — typically the freeholder, landlord, housing association, resident management company or right-to-manage company.

A managing agent often carries out the checks in practice, but appointing an agent does not transfer the legal duty: the responsible person remains accountable for making sure the checks happen on time and are recorded. The Fire Safety Act 2021 put beyond doubt that, in multi-occupied residential buildings, the Fire Safety Order covers the doors between domestic premises and common parts — so flat entrance doors are within the responsible person's fire risk assessment even where leaseholders own them.

Which buildings are in scope? The over-11-metre threshold

The checking duties apply to residential buildings in England containing two or more sets of domestic premises where the building is over 11 metres in height. Regulation 10(8) provides that height is calculated to the top storey in accordance with regulation 3 of the same regulations, and the GOV.UK fire door guidance describes buildings over the threshold as typically those of more than four storeys. If a building sits near the line, treat measurement as a task for a competent surveyor.

• Over 11 metres: quarterly communal fire door checks, annual flat entrance door checks on a best-endeavours basis, records of the steps taken, plus the resident information duty.
• Under 11 metres, 2+ sets of domestic premises with common evacuation parts: no fixed statutory check frequency, but the resident fire door information duty still applies, and Article 17 still requires fire doors to be maintained through a suitable system — the fire risk assessment should set the checking regime.
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 do not apply; each nation has its own fire safety regime without a direct equivalent of the Regulation 10 frequencies.

How often should fire doors be checked?

Communal fire doors: at least every 3 months

Every fire door in the common parts — doors to stairways, corridors, lobbies, bin stores, plant and service rooms — must be checked at least every three months, including its self-closing device. Quarterly is the legal minimum, not a target: communal doors take heavy daily use, and the GOV.UK guidance advises keeping an eye on them on an ongoing basis whenever other checks are carried out in the common parts.

Flat entrance doors: at least every 12 months

The responsible person must use best endeavours to check every fire door at the entrance to individual domestic premises at least every 12 months, again including the self-closer. Flat entrance doors protect the 'stay put' strategy in most purpose-built blocks, which is why the post-Grenfell reforms singled them out for a statutory check despite the practical difficulty of accessing private front doors.

These frequencies are statutory minimums for buildings over 11 metres. A fire risk assessment can reasonably conclude that particular doors — busy communal doors on escape routes, for instance — need more frequent attention.

What does a Regulation 10 fire door check involve?

The GOV.UK fire door guidance describes the checks as simple, basic and visual — 'you should not need to engage a specialist to carry these out', and no tools are involved. Caretakers, managing agents, housing officers and maintenance personnel can do them with appropriate instruction. For each door, the guidance says to check that:

• Replacement doors — a resident has not replaced a fire-resisting flat entrance door with a new, non-fire-resisting door.
• Letterboxes — they close firmly and are not jammed open.
• Damage — there is no damage to, or defect in, the door, its frame or the securing wall.
• Glazing — any fire-resisting glass and its glazing system are in good condition.
• Ironmongery — there are no obvious defects in the hinges or other ironmongery.
• Seals — intumescent strips and smoke seals are undamaged and make contact with the door edge.
• Gaps — the gap between the door and the frame is not excessive, with around 4mm the rule of thumb.
• Self-closer — the device closes the door fully from any opening angle.

Communal door checks cover the same points, plus signs of wear and tear from daily use, the operation of door selector mechanisms where fitted on double doors, and the condition of air transfer grilles in doors to plant and service rooms. The check itself needs no qualification, but any repair or replacement it identifies should go promptly to a competent contractor — under Article 17, finding a defect and leaving it unfixed is itself a failure of the maintenance duty.

What does 'best endeavours' mean for flat entrance doors?

Flat entrance doors open into private homes, so the law does not demand the impossible. Best endeavours means the responsible person cannot force entry, but must genuinely and persistently try to check every flat entrance door at least once in each 12-month period — and must be able to prove it. Regulation 10(5) expressly requires a record of the steps taken to comply, including, where access to a flat was not granted, the steps taken to try to gain access.

1. Notify residents of the checking programme in advance and explain why it matters, referencing the fire door information they already receive under Regulation 10(1).
2. Offer more than one appointment, at different times of day, and log each attempt with dates.
3. Record every refusal or no-answer, the door affected, and the follow-up action taken.
4. Escalate persistent refusals — the GOV.UK guidance notes that 'ultimately, you might need to consider legal action if a resident persistently refuses to cooperate.'
5. Feed unresolved doors into the fire risk assessment so the residual risk is formally considered.

What best endeavours does not permit is quietly dropping the doors you could not reach: a door with no completed check and no documented access attempts is a gap an auditing fire and rescue authority will find quickly.

What information must residents be given about fire doors?

A frequently confused point: the duty to give residents information about fire doors sits within Regulation 10 itself — not Regulation 9. Regulation 9 is a separate duty to display and provide general fire safety instructions covering the building's evacuation strategy and how to report a fire.

The fire door information duty in Regulation 10(1) to (3) applies more widely than the checking duties: it covers any building containing two or more sets of domestic premises with common parts through which residents would need to evacuate, whatever its height — including converted houses. Residents must be told, in essence, three things:

• Fire doors should be kept shut when not in use.
• Residents and their guests should not tamper with self-closing devices.
• Any fault with, or damage to, a fire door should be reported immediately to the responsible person.

The information must go to new residents as soon as reasonably practicable after they move in, and to all residents again at intervals not exceeding 12 months. Keeping dated copies of what was issued, and when, is the simplest way to evidence compliance.

What records should you keep?

The statutory record requirement in Regulation 10(5) attaches to the flat entrance door duty, but Regulation 10 compliance as a whole stands or falls on its paper trail — a record showing what was checked, when, by whom, what was found and what was done about it is the evidence a fire and rescue authority will ask for. The GOV.UK guidance confirms electronic systems may be used for planning and recording. A robust record set includes:

Since Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 strengthened responsible person duties from 1 October 2023 — including recording the fire risk assessment in full — written, retrievable fire safety records have become the working assumption of enforcement. A simple, consistently completed check log is worth more than an elaborate system used sporadically.

Enforcement and penalties

Fire and rescue authorities enforce the 2022 Regulations under the Fire Safety Order. Failing to comply with the regulations is a criminal offence under Article 32(1)(b) of the Order where the failure places one or more relevant persons at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire. On summary conviction the penalty is a fine; on conviction on indictment it is a fine, imprisonment for up to two years, or both. Authorities can also serve enforcement notices requiring failures to be put right, before or instead of prosecuting.

In practice, missed or unrecorded fire door checks rarely appear in isolation. An inspector who finds no check records will usually look next at the fire risk assessment, the maintenance system behind Article 17 and the resident information duties — and defective fire doors are among the most commonly cited items in enforcement action. Quarterly checks and honest records are inexpensive compliance.

How do Regulation 10 checks differ from a professional fire door inspection?

Regulation 10 checks and professional fire door inspections answer different questions. The statutory check asks whether anything has visibly gone wrong with a door since last time. A detailed inspection by a competent fire door inspector asks whether the door assembly is actually capable of performing as intended — which involves certification evidence, measured gaps and assessment of every component against the doorset's test or certification evidence.

The case for the deeper look is stark: the Fire Door Inspection Scheme found that 75% of inspected fire doors in the UK failed to meet required safety standards in 2021 — and most of those doors would have looked broadly acceptable at a passing glance. Routine checks catch day-to-day deterioration between inspections; periodic professional inspection confirms the doors remain fit for purpose and picks up what a visual check cannot.

Our view is that the two regimes work best deliberately paired: in-house staff running the statutory quarterly and annual checks, with periodic professional inspection to a defined standard behind them — and every replacement doorset supplied with third-party certification, so there is always a known benchmark to check against. Our guides to fire door inspection and the wider UK fire door regulations landscape explain how the pieces fit together.