Regulation 38 Fire Safety Information: The Handover Duty Explained

What is Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations 2010?

Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations 2010 is the legal bridge between the construction of a building and its safe operation. It requires the person carrying out building work to hand over fire safety information to the building's responsible person — the individual or organisation that will hold fire safety duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 once the building is in use.

The duty is triggered where building work consists of or includes the erection or extension of a relevant building, or is carried out in connection with a relevant change of use, and Part B (fire safety) of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations imposes a requirement. A "relevant building" is one to which the Fire Safety Order applies, or will apply after the work is complete — in practice, virtually all workplaces, commercial premises and the common parts of multi-occupied residential buildings.

The regulation defines fire safety information as information relating to the design and construction of the building or extension, and the services, fittings and equipment provided, which will assist the responsible person to operate and maintain the building with reasonable safety. Fire doors sit squarely within that definition: they are both part of the constructed compartmentation and fittings that must be maintained for life.

Who must give what to whom — and when?

The person carrying out the work

On most projects the duty lands with the main contractor or developer, but the information itself is assembled from many hands: the fire engineer's strategy, the architect's as-built drawings, and — for fire doors — the manufacturer's certification and the installer's records. Collecting doorset evidence at the point of supply and installation, rather than reconstructing it at practical completion, is what separates a smooth handover from a scramble.

The responsible person

The recipient is the responsible person under the Fire Safety Order — typically the employer for a workplace, or the person or organisation with control of the premises, such as a landlord, freeholder or managing agent for the common parts of a block of flats. From the moment of handover, that person relies on the Regulation 38 pack to discharge Article 17 of the Order, which requires fire safety facilities — fire doors included — to be maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.

The deadline

The information must be furnished no later than the date the work is completed or the date the building is first occupied, whichever comes first; where the building remains occupied during the works, the deadline is the date of completion. If a building is occupied in phases before completion, the practical implication is that the information cannot wait for the end of the project — occupation starts the clock on the responsible person's statutory duties, and they need the pack to meet them. The regulation as it now stands also closes the loop: the responsible person must acknowledge receipt and confirm the information is sufficient to understand and maintain the building, and the person carrying out the work must confirm to the relevant authority that the information has been delivered.

What does a compliant fire safety information pack contain?

Regulation 38 itself describes the information in broad terms; Approved Document B provides guidance on the type of information to hand over, proportionate to the building. A well-prepared pack for a typical building covers:

• The fire strategy or fire safety design basis for the building, including the evacuation approach.
• As-built drawings showing escape routes, compartment walls and floors, and the location of fire-resisting construction.
• Details of passive fire protection — fire doors, fire-stopping, dampers, cavity barriers — with their specifications.
• Active systems: fire detection and alarm, emergency lighting, smoke control and any suppression systems, with commissioning records.
• Facilities for the fire and rescue service, such as dry or wet risers, fire-fighting shafts and access provisions.
• Maintenance requirements for every fire safety measure, including recommended inspection frequencies.

For simple buildings the pack may be slim; for complex buildings it grows with the design. What it must never be is an unstructured box of manuals — the test is whether the responsible person can actually use it to operate and maintain the building with reasonable safety.

What fire door information should a Regulation 38 pack include?

Fire doors are among the most safety-critical — and most frequently inspected — items in the pack. In residential buildings over 11m in England, Regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 requires communal fire doors to be checked at least every 3 months, and flat entrance doors at least every 12 months on a best-endeavours basis. Those checks include looking for certification evidence — which is exactly what a good Regulation 38 pack provides.

The BWF Fire Door Alliance sets out seven categories of fire door information to hand over:

1. The location and fire rating of every fire door in the building.
2. The relevant fire door certificates for the doors installed.
3. The seal types fitted — intumescent, smoke and acoustic.
4. Frame material details and their relevance to the test evidence.
5. Hardware specifications — hinges, closers and other essential ironmongery.
6. Maintenance guidance for all components of the doorset.
7. The recommended inspection and maintenance frequency, reflecting how heavily each door is used.

Test evidence and certification

Every fire door's performance claim rests on test evidence: BS 476-22 (the historic national route) or BS EN 1634-1 (the European route). Approved Document B currently accepts either, though a transition away from BS 476 classifications is in progress — see our guide to BS 476 vs EN 1634 testing. The pack should identify each door's rating — FD30 means 30 minutes' fire resistance, FD60 means 60 minutes, and the "s" suffix (FD30s) denotes cold smoke control with smoke seals — together with third-party certification details and the label or plug ID that ties the physical door to its certificate. Without that traceability, an inspector five years later cannot tell a certified doorset from a lookalike.

Installation records

A certified door leaf installed badly is not a fire door. The pack should record who installed each doorset, any installer certification scheme held, and confirmation that installation followed the manufacturer's instructions and the certification scope — with BS 8214, the code of practice for timber fire door assemblies, as the benchmark for workmanship. Perimeter gaps, packing, fixings and seals all determine whether the tested performance is achieved on site.

Maintenance requirements

The pack should tell the responsible person how to keep each doorset compliant for its life: inspection frequency, how to adjust closers and hinges, which replacement seals and components fall within the certification scope, and what would invalidate the door's performance — unauthorised glazing apertures, planed edges or non-compatible hardware. This is the section that turns a handover document into a working maintenance regime under Article 17.

How does Regulation 38 relate to the golden thread and the BSA gateways?

For higher-risk buildings in England — those at least 18m tall or with 7+ storeys and 2 or more residential units — the Building Safety Act 2022 layers a stricter information regime on top of Regulation 38. These buildings must pass through Gateways 1 to 3 (planning, pre-construction approval, and completion) under the Building Safety Regulator, and dutyholders must create and maintain the golden thread of building information: a digital, secure, accessible single source of truth about the building's design and safety.

At completion, government guidance requires the client to transfer building information — including relevant fire safety information for the responsible person — as part of the handover. The Regulation 38 pack is therefore not a parallel exercise but a foundation dataset within the golden thread: per-door locations, ratings, certificates, hardware and maintenance histories are exactly the kind of structured, digital records the regime expects.

The practical lesson for anyone procuring fire doors on a higher-risk building: demand doorset evidence in a structured, digital form from the outset. Retrofitting a golden thread from paper certificates and site photographs is slow, expensive and error-prone.

What happens if the Regulation 38 pack is missing or incomplete?

Failing to provide fire safety information is a breach of the Building Regulations by the person carrying out the work — but the consequences fall hardest on the responsible person left without it:

• Article 17 exposure. The responsible person must maintain fire doors in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair — difficult to evidence without knowing what was installed and to what specification.
• Regulation 10 friction. Quarterly communal door checks in residential buildings over 11m include looking for certification evidence; with no pack, every check starts from zero.
• Weaker fire risk assessments. Assessors must make conservative assumptions about undocumented doors, which can trigger recommendations for intrusive inspection or replacement.
• Retrospective survey costs. Rebuilding a door schedule from scratch means paying a surveyor to identify, measure and assess every doorset — and provenance can rarely be fully recovered.
• Handover and transaction friction. Missing fire safety information complicates building sales, lettings and, on higher-risk buildings, the golden thread and safety case work the accountable person must do.

If you have inherited a building without a pack, the pragmatic sequence is: request the information in writing from the developer or contractor; check what building control, the fire strategy consultant or the door manufacturer can re-supply; and commission a fire door inspection to rebuild a door-by-door register. As the BWF Fire Door Alliance notes, incomplete information — like incorrect components — can significantly compromise fire door performance, endangering lives and property.

Regulation 38 fire door pack: contents checklist

Use this checklist to assemble — or audit — the fire door section of a Regulation 38 handover pack:

A pack that answers all nine rows will serve the responsible person on day one, the door checker every quarter, the fire risk assessor at every review — and, on a higher-risk building, the accountable person for the life of the asset. For the wider legal landscape around fire doors, see our guide to UK fire door regulations.