Guide
A practical guide for responsible persons, landlords, managing agents and facilities teams on the simple visual checks that keep fire doors working between formal inspections — what to look at, how often, what to record, and when to bring in a specialist.
A routine check is a straightforward visual look at whether a fire door is doing its job day to day: is it closing, is it latching, is it obstructed, is it damaged. It can usually be carried out by a competent member of staff, a caretaker or a managing agent, and its value is that it happens often.
A formal fire door inspection or survey is something different — a detailed technical assessment of each doorset by a competent inspector, recorded in a report. Routine checks catch the obvious and the urgent between those assessments; they do not substitute for them, and nothing on this page should be read as a technical specification for any particular doorset.
Parsec Fire Doors carries out fire door repairs, remedial works, installation and replacement. Where a formal fire door inspection report is required, it can be arranged through a specialist fire door inspection contractor, keeping the assessment independent of the company carrying out the works.
If the question is who must arrange action rather than how to check the door, see who is responsible for fire doors for the responsible person, agent, landlord and resident roles.
A routine check flags concerns. The following need technical judgement and should not be settled on the spot during a walk-round:
One building type in England has a specific legal cadence. Everywhere else, the interval should be set proportionately rather than copied across.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require the responsible person to check communal fire doors at least quarterly, and to use best endeavours to check flat entrance doors that open onto communal areas at least annually. These are the specific duties for this category of building.
The quarterly and annual duties above are not imposed on these buildings, but the fire risk assessment still needs to consider the condition of fire doors. Many landlords and agents adopt a routine visual regime anyway, at a frequency that suits the building.
Frequency should follow the fire risk assessment, licensing conditions where they apply and the level of wear the doors see. Heavily used doors in shared kitchens and hallways generally warrant more frequent attention.
Set the interval proportionately: door usage, occupancy, the findings of the fire risk assessment and the guidance applying to that premises type. Doors on main circulation routes typically need looking at far more often than rarely used doors.
The quarterly and annual duties described above come from the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and apply to multi-occupied residential buildings in England whose top storey is more than 11 metres above ground level. They do not set a universal interval for every premises. If you are unsure which duties apply to your building, check the current GOV.UK guidance for the regulations or take competent advice; our fire door regulations explained guide maps how the main English rules fit together. Flat entrance doors have their own practical considerations, covered in our guide to flat entrance fire doors.
Work through each door in turn. Record what you looked at, what you found and the date — a note against each door is worth more than a single tick for the building.
Open the door to several different angles, including a small opening, and let it close on its own. It should close fully into the frame and engage the latch without a push. A door that stops short, bounces off the frame or rests on the latch is the single most common and most significant thing a routine check picks up.
Wedges, extinguishers, bins, furniture and tied-back closers all defeat the door. Where doors genuinely need to stand open, that should be through a device designed for the purpose that releases on the alarm — not an improvised solution.
Look for holes, deep gouges, splits, missing lippings, damage around the lock or hinge positions, loose or damaged frames and any breach that goes through the leaf. Note anything that appears to have been patched or filled.
Where intumescent strips and smoke seals are fitted, check they are present along their full length, not painted over, not torn, curling or missing sections, and still sitting in their grooves. Missing or damaged sections should be flagged rather than replaced by guesswork.
The self-closing device should be securely fixed, with no visible oil leaks, no loose arms and no missing cover. Note doors that slam, doors that will not close the last few inches, and doors that have been adjusted so far down that they no longer close reliably.
You are not measuring against a tolerance here. You are looking for gaps that are visibly uneven or wide enough to see daylight or the room beyond, doors that catch on the frame or floor, and leaves that have visibly warped or twisted.
Cracked or broken glazing, loose or missing beads, and glazing that appears to have been replaced with ordinary glass should all be recorded for specialist assessment rather than judged on site.
New letterplates, cat flaps, viewers, cables run through the leaf, additional locks, extra signage screwed into the door, or a leaf that has been trimmed to clear new flooring are all worth recording, as they can affect the doorset.
Loose, missing or broken hinge screws, handles, latches and keeps are easy to spot and are frequently the reason a door stops closing and latching properly.
Check that the signage the building relies on is present, legible and matches how the door is used — for example a door fitted with a self-closing device that has lost its sign.
Send us photographs, the door locations and your postcode and we will advise on repair or replacement and price the remedial work. Existing inspection reports and FRA action lists can be attached privately to the enquiry form.
Already have a fire door inspection report or FRA action list? Attach it securely to the enquiry form and we will price the remedial or replacement work door by door.
A check that is not recorded is difficult to evidence later. For each door, keep the date, who carried out the check, the door reference or location, what was found and what was done about it — including where a defect was passed on for repair.
Where you are relying on best endeavours to check flat entrance doors, record the attempts as well as the outcomes: the letters or notices sent, the appointments offered and the visits made. Access is usually the limiting factor, and the record of trying is part of the evidence.
Records of any remedial work sit alongside those checks. What you can typically expect to receive and retain is set out in our guide to installation and handover documentation.
Some findings are straightforward maintenance — a loose hinge screw, an adjustment to a closer, a damaged seal section. Others raise the question of whether the doorset is worth repairing at all.
Our repair or replacement guide explains how that decision is usually reached, and what happens after a fire door inspection report covers turning a longer list of findings into a costed, prioritised programme.