What Is a "Competent Person" Under the Fire Safety Order?

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 uses the phrase "competent person" repeatedly, but it never hands you a qualification list or a certificate to check against. That ambiguity is deliberate, but it's also where a lot of responsible persons get caught out, either by assuming they're competent when they're not, or by hiring someone competent on paper who doesn't actually know the building.

What the Fire Safety Order actually says

Article 18 of the Order requires the responsible person to appoint one or more competent persons to help them carry out the preventive and protective measures required by the Order. A competent person is defined as someone with sufficient training, experience, knowledge, and other qualities to properly assist in undertaking those measures. Notice what's missing from that definition: a specific certificate. Competence is assessed by what someone can demonstrably do, not just what a piece of paper says.

Competence has three practical components

In practice, being a competent person for fire risk assessment purposes usually comes down to three things working together:

  • Training and qualifications: a recognised fire risk assessment qualification (commonly a Level 3 or 4 qualification, or NEBOSH Fire Certificate) demonstrates a baseline of technical knowledge
  • Experience: having actually carried out fire risk assessments on comparable buildings, not just studied the theory
  • Ongoing knowledge: staying current with fire safety legislation and guidance, which changes, and applying it to the specific type of building being assessed

Someone can be technically qualified and still not be the right competent person for a particular job. A fire risk assessor experienced in small residential HMOs isn't automatically competent to assess a large, complex commercial premises with sprinkler systems and phased evacuation, and a responsible person appointing them for that job without checking is taking on risk they may not realise.

Can the responsible person be their own competent person?

Yes, if they genuinely meet the standard. For a simple, low risk premises (a small shop or office with straightforward means of escape) a responsible person with appropriate training can reasonably assess their own building. For anything more complex, sleeping risk, vulnerable occupants, complicated escape routes, tall buildings, the expectation is that a suitably qualified external fire risk assessor is brought in. The test isn't "can I fill in a form", it's "do I have the training, experience, and knowledge to properly assess this specific building's fire risks."

What happens if the wrong person does the assessment

If a fire risk assessment turns out to be inadequate, incomplete, or wrong, and it can be shown the person who carried it out wasn't actually competent to do so, that's a direct liability issue for the responsible person who appointed them. This has come up in fire safety enforcement and prosecution cases: an assessment existing on paper isn't enough if the person who wrote it didn't have the competence to do it properly. Checking a fire risk assessor's actual qualifications, experience with similar buildings, and professional membership (bodies like the Institute of Fire Safety Managers or the Institution of Fire Engineers) before appointing them is a reasonable and increasingly expected step.

The practical takeaway

Competence under the Fire Safety Order is about the right person for the right building, not a box to tick. If you're not confident your fire risk assessment was carried out by someone genuinely competent for a building of that type and complexity, it's worth having it checked or redone properly.

Once you know what counts as ‘competent’ under the Order, the practical next questions are usually whether landlords specifically need a fire risk assessment and what a properly done assessment actually covers.

I'm a fire risk assessor with almost 30 years in fire safety and health and safety, and I carry out fire risk assessments for UK landlords and businesses matched to the actual building, not a generic template. You can see the fire risk assessment service here.

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