Fire Safety Compliance Hits a 14-Year Low | Here's Why

Nearly half of all buildings in England are failing their fire safety audits on the first visit. The latest Home Office Fire Statistics tell a story that's hard to argue with. National fire safety compliance now sits at just 57%, down from 69% in 2016/17 and the lowest satisfactory rate since 2011. That means for every ten buildings audited, roughly four are falling short of the standards meant to keep people alive in a fire. If you manage a building or hold responsibility for one, those odds deserve your attention.

Where You Are in England Matters More Than It Should

Fire safety compliance varies enormously by region, and the gap between the best and worst-performing areas is difficult to explain away.

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service recorded the highest audit failure rate in 2024/25, 92% of its 942 audits resulted in a fail. Lancashire followed at 88%. Northumberland, Buckinghamshire, and Devon and Somerset each came in at 72%.

Compare that with Cheshire, where 92% of audited buildings passed. Staffordshire managed 90%, Hertfordshire 89%. Seven of the ten regions with the highest pass rates sit in the South of England. I don't think that's purely down to building stock or local knowledge. It points to real differences in how fire safety is resourced, prioritised, and culturally embedded from one region to the next.

Fewer Inspections, Worse Results

Fire and Rescue Services are running 4,000 fewer audits than they were in 2016, but uncovering 4,000 more breaches. The buildings getting inspected are in worse shape than they were a decade ago, and the vast majority of premises aren't being inspected at all. Industry analysis suggests that at the current pace, it would take 48 years to audit every premise in England.

I've seen this pattern play out in workplaces throughout my career. When organisations treat compliance as something that happens during an inspection rather than between inspections, standards quietly erode. Nobody sets out to let things slip. It just happens gradually, one propped-open fire door and one skipped alarm test at a time, until the gap between what's written in the policy and what's actually happening on the ground becomes a chasm.

The Three Failures That Keep Coming Up

The breach data is frustratingly familiar:

• Emergency routes and exits: 10,323 breaches. Blocked exits, locked fire doors, broken emergency lighting, doors wedged open. The very escape routes people would need in the worst moments of their lives, compromised by everyday carelessness.
• Maintenance: 8,666 breaches. Fire alarms not tested, extinguishers not serviced, fire doors that won't close properly. Not complex engineering failures, just upkeep that got pushed down the priority list.
• Missing or inadequate Fire Risk Assessments: 8,471 breaches. Under Article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, an up-to-date fire risk assessment is a legal requirement for almost all commercial premises. And yet, year after year, it sits in the top three reasons buildings fail.

None of this is specialist knowledge. These are the fundamentals. The fact that tens of thousands of buildings are still getting caught out on blocked exits and lapsed risk assessments tells me we have a discipline problem, not a knowledge gap.

Regulation Is Tightening, and Quickly

This data lands in the middle of the most significant period of building safety reform England has seen. The government accepted all 58 recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report and is rolling out reforms in phases through to 2028. Fire safety responsibilities moved from the Home Office to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in April 2025. Mandatory Residential Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) take effect in 2026. Fire risk assessors will soon need formal accreditation to practise.

The regulatory environment is shifting fast. Organisations that are still treating fire safety as an annual box to tick are going to find themselves exposed to the kind of scrutiny that follows when something goes wrong, and the paperwork doesn't hold up.

What I'd Recommend Doing This Week

If I were sitting across the table from you right now, here's what I'd suggest. Pull out your Fire Risk Assessment and check when it was last reviewed, and by whom. Then walk your escape routes yourself. Not a desk-based review, an actual walk. Are exits clear? Does the emergency lighting work? Are fire doors closing fully on their own? Then look at your maintenance records. Is there a schedule, and is someone actually following it?

These are the practical checks that take an afternoon and could be the difference between passing your next audit and explaining to an enforcement officer why you didn't.

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