Fire and rescue services in England completed 51,020 fire safety audits in the year ending March 2025, and only 58% of them were satisfactory — the joint-lowest pass rate since 2011. This page pulls the UK’s fire safety enforcement statistics together in one place: how many audits fire and rescue services carry out, how many end in a formal notice, which Fire Safety Order breaches come up most often, and which premises types are most likely to be served. The core data comes from MHCLG’s fire prevention and protection statistics for England and its fire statistics data tables (FIRE1202 and FIRE1204), with the London Datastore, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Welsh Government adding a wider-UK spine.

It is written for the two questions every responsible person actually asks — “will I get audited, and what fails?” — as well as for fire risk assessors, FSO compliance writers, property and care-home publications, and insurers who cite this release each year. Every figure is dated and sourced. This page covers audits and formal notices served under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 only; prosecutions and fines are a separate topic and are handed off with a single signpost below.

Key facts and figures

  • 51,020 fire safety audits were completed by fire and rescue services in England in the year ending March 2025 — up 2.4% on the previous year (49,835).
  • 58% of audits (29,714) were satisfactory — the joint-lowest satisfactory rate since the year ending March 2011.
  • 21,306 audits (42%) had an unsatisfactory outcome in the year ending March 2025.
  • 2,972 audits led to a formal notification — up 5.3% on the year and 29% higher than five years earlier (2,295 in the year ending March 2020).
  • 1,728 enforcement notices (Article 30) were issued, alongside 959 prohibition notices and 251 alteration notices.
  • 10,323 breaches of Article 14 (emergency routes and exits) were recorded — the single most-breached Fire Safety Order article.
  • 211 enforcement notices went to shops (12% of all notices), the most of any premises type, followed by care homes (192).
  • 5.2 hours was the average audit length — the longest in the timeseries, with unsatisfactory audits taking 1.6 hours longer than satisfactory ones.

All figures are the latest available as of July 2026, and this page is updated when new data is released — MHCLG publishes the fire prevention and protection statistics and the FIRE1202/FIRE1204 data tables annually each autumn (the current release covers April 2024 to March 2025 and was last updated on 28 August 2025), while the London Datastore refreshes monthly and the Scottish and Welsh figures once a year.

How many fire safety audits are carried out each year?

Fire and rescue services in England completed 51,020 fire safety audits in the year ending March 2025, up 2.4% on the 49,835 carried out the previous year, according to MHCLG’s fire prevention and protection statistics. An audit is a fire and rescue service’s formal assessment of whether a non-domestic building complies with the Fire Safety Order — the check that decides whether the responsible person has done what the law requires.

Audits are risk-targeted rather than random, so a rise in the total does not mean every building is more likely to be visited in a given year; it means services are directing more of their protection resource at the premises their risk-based inspection programmes flag. For context, the average audit took 5.2 hours in the year ending March 2025 — the longest in the timeseries — and unsatisfactory audits took, on average, 1.6 hours longer than satisfactory ones, reflecting the extra time spent documenting failings and agreeing remedial action.

Alongside the 51,020 audits, fire and rescue services carried out a much larger number of lighter-touch activities such as fire safety checks and post-fire audits, but the audit figure is the one to anchor on because it is the formal compliance assessment that can lead to a notice.

What percentage of fire safety audits fail in the UK?

42% of fire safety audits in England had an unsatisfactory outcome in the year ending March 2025 — 21,306 of the 51,020 audits — meaning only 58% (29,714) were satisfactory. That 58% satisfactory rate is the joint-lowest since the year ending March 2011, so the “more than four in ten audits fail” framing is not a statistical blip but the continuation of a multi-year decline in compliance found at audit.

“Unsatisfactory” does not automatically mean a formal notice. Most unsatisfactory audits are resolved through informal action — advice and a written notification setting out what needs to change — rather than a legal notice. In the year ending March 2025 fire and rescue services issued 18,351 informal notifications, 34% more than five years earlier, dwarfing the number of formal notices. The escalation ladder runs from informal advice, to a formal notice, and only in the most serious cases to prosecution.

The practical reading for a responsible person is blunt: if your building is audited, the base rate says there is a better-than-two-in-five chance the service finds something unsatisfactory. The most common findings — covered next — are exactly the day-to-day items a competent fire warden team is there to keep on top of.

How many fire safety enforcement notices are issued each year?

2,972 audits led to a formal notification in England in the year ending March 2025, up 5.3% on the year and 29% higher than the 2,295 issued five years earlier. Formal notices sit at the sharp end of enforcement and come in three types under the Fire Safety Order, each with a different legal effect:

Notice type FSO article Number (YE Mar 2025) What it does
Enforcement notice Article 30 1,728 Requires named remedial steps within a set period; up 3.4% on the year
Prohibition notice Article 31 959 Restricts or bans use of premises (or part) where risk to life is serious
Alteration notice Article 29 251 Requires notice before changes; up 81% on the year
Total formal notifications — 2,972 Up 5.3% on the year; 29% higher than five years earlier

1,728 enforcement notices (Article 30) made up the bulk, up 3.4% on the previous year, followed by 959 prohibition notices (Article 31) and 251 alteration notices (Article 29). The stand-out movement was in alteration notices, which rose 81% year-on-year — a small base but a sharp increase, signalling that services are increasingly formalising the requirement to be told before high-risk premises are altered. A prohibition notice is the one that hurts commercially: it can close a floor, a wing or a whole building at short notice where the risk to life is judged serious.

Which Fire Safety Order breaches are most common?

Article 14 (emergency routes and exits) was the most-breached Fire Safety Order article in the year ending March 2025, with 10,323 breaches recorded at audit. The pattern is consistent year to year and reads like a fire warden’s daily checklist — the failures are overwhelmingly about the basics of getting people out safely, not exotic engineering faults.

FSO article What it covers Breaches (YE Mar 2025)
Article 14 Emergency routes and exits 10,323
Article 17 Maintenance of equipment and safety measures 8,666
Article 9 Fire risk assessment 8,471

The top three breaches — blocked or inadequate escape routes (Article 14), poor maintenance of fire safety measures (Article 17), and a missing or inadequate fire risk assessment (Article 9) — together account for the lion’s share of what auditors write up. Two of the three are behavioural and operational: an escape route stays clear and equipment stays maintained because someone is checking, and that someone is usually a fire warden. The third, the fire risk assessment, is the responsible person’s legal foundation; if it is absent or inadequate, the audit is almost guaranteed to be unsatisfactory. Ignition sources and detection are a separate subject covered on our sister site’s fire causes and detection statistics page.

Which premises are most likely to be served a notice?

Shops received the most enforcement notices in the year ending March 2025 — 211, or 12% of all notices — followed by care homes (192, 11%) and other sleeping accommodation (163). Shops were also the single most-audited premises type, accounting for 10,106 audits (20% of the total), with care homes second on 6,461. That two premises types dominate both the audit and the notice counts is no coincidence: they combine high footfall or vulnerable occupants with the kind of complex, changing use that fire and rescue services target.

Premises type Enforcement notices (YE Mar 2025) Share of notices Audits (YE Mar 2025)
Shops 211 12% 10,106 (20% of all audits)
Care homes 192 11% 6,461
Other sleeping accommodation 163 — —

The sleeping-risk logic runs right through the figures: care homes and other sleeping accommodation feature heavily because the consequences of a failed evacuation are gravest where occupants are asleep, frail or dependent on staff to get them out. For those premises, a trained warden team is not a box-tick — it is the mechanism by which the building actually gets evacuated, which is why we cover the numbers behind evacuation performance on our fire evacuation statistics UK page.

What about Scotland, Wales and London?

The England release is the richest, but the devolved services and London publish their own enforcement figures on different bases. Fire and rescue authorities in Wales completed 2,117 fire safety audits of non-domestic premises in 2024-25 — about 2% of known premises — according to Welsh Government statistics, a reminder that even a busy audit programme reaches only a small slice of the estate in any single year.

In Scotland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service issued 30 formal notices in 2023-24 (15 enforcement, 13 prohibition and 2 alteration) — double the 15 issued the year before, according to its fire safety and organisational statistics. HM Fire Service Inspectorate in Scotland publishes separate thematic reviews of how the SFRS carries out its enforcement duty. The London Fire Brigade carried out 11,730 regulatory fire safety inspections and audits in 2025, published monthly on the London Datastore roughly one month in arrears — the most granular and up-to-date view of enforcement activity anywhere in the UK.

Because the four nations and London use different definitions, reporting years and premises classifications, these totals should be read side by side rather than summed into a single UK figure.

Where do prosecutions and other enforcement fit?

This page deliberately stops at audits and formal notices. Fire Safety Order prosecutions are a separate, much smaller step — there were 34 Article-32 prosecutions in England in the year ending March 2025 — and the full picture of convictions, fines and sentencing is covered on firemarshaltraining’s fire safety prosecution statistics page. Enforcement under separate regimes also sits elsewhere: Health and Safety at Work Act notices, Fee for Intervention and HSE prosecutions are covered on riskassessmenttraining’s HSE enforcement statistics page. Home fire safety visits, which appear in the same MHCLG release, are a domestic-prevention activity outside the scope of this workplace-enforcement page.

Keeping those boundaries clean matters for anyone citing the numbers: an enforcement notice, a prohibition notice and a prosecution are three different legal instruments with very different thresholds, and conflating them overstates how often the most serious action is taken.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of fire safety audits fail (are unsatisfactory) in the UK?

42% of fire safety audits in England had an unsatisfactory outcome in the year ending March 2025 — 21,306 of 51,020 audits — leaving a 58% satisfactory rate, the joint-lowest since the year ending March 2011. Most unsatisfactory audits are resolved informally rather than with a formal notice.

How many fire safety enforcement notices are issued each year?

Fire and rescue services in England issued 1,728 enforcement notices (Article 30) in the year ending March 2025, part of 2,972 formal notifications overall that also included 959 prohibition notices and 251 alteration notices. The total was up 5.3% on the year and 29% higher than five years earlier.

Which Fire Safety Order breaches are most common?

Article 14 (emergency routes and exits) was the most-breached article in the year ending March 2025, with 10,323 breaches, followed by Article 17 (maintenance) with 8,666 and Article 9 (fire risk assessment) with 8,471. The most common failings are day-to-day housekeeping items rather than complex engineering faults.

Which types of premises are most likely to receive a fire safety enforcement notice?

Shops received the most enforcement notices in the year ending March 2025 (211, or 12% of all notices), followed by care homes (192, 11%) and other sleeping accommodation (163). Shops were also the most-audited premises type, at 10,106 audits (20% of the total).

Where do UK fire safety enforcement statistics come from?

The core data is MHCLG’s fire prevention and protection statistics for England and its fire statistics data tables (FIRE1202 for audits and FIRE1204 for outcomes and enforcement), which cover April 2024 to March 2025 and were last updated on 28 August 2025. The London Datastore, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Welsh Government provide the wider-UK and mid-year figures.

What is the difference between an enforcement notice and a prohibition notice?

An enforcement notice (Article 30) requires the responsible person to make named improvements within a set period, while a prohibition notice (Article 31) restricts or bans use of the premises, or part of them, where the risk to life is judged serious. There were 1,728 enforcement notices and 959 prohibition notices in England in the year ending March 2025.

If you are the responsible person for a workplace, these numbers set the context: more than four in ten audited buildings fail, and the most common failings are the everyday exit, maintenance and checking tasks a fire warden team is there to own. Our Fire Warden Training course covers exactly those checks — escape routes, equipment, evacuation and assembly-point management — for £18 per learner, RoSPA approved and CPD accredited, 60 to 90 minutes online with an instant certificate on passing and bulk discounts from 10 delegates.

Sources & references

More than four in ten audited buildings fail on everyday exit and maintenance checks — get your team trained to own them. RoSPA approved and CPD accredited fire warden training, £18 per learner.

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Mark McShane
Mark McShane
Health & Safety Training Specialist, Online CPD Academy

Mark writes about workplace health & safety, fire safety and accredited online training for Fire Warden Training, part of Online CPD Academy.