The pattern fire and rescue officers describe is not the one most building owners expect. It rarely starts with a catastrophic fire. It starts with an enforcement notice that was never acted on. Or a Fire Alarm panel with a fault light that has been showing for months. Or Emergency Lighting that has not been tested since the last manager left.
Hannah Eales of law firm Kingsley Napley captures the pattern:
“Those that bury their heads in the sand and ignore the notice or the requirements of the notice, tend to be the ones who end up facing prosecution down the line.”
That pattern is now producing five-figure fines, suspended prison sentences and personal liability for individual directors. If you are the Responsible Person for a commercial or residential building, this is a shift worth paying attention to.
The numbers: Fire Safety enforcement is climbing
Formal enforcement activity under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is at its highest level in at least five years. The FSO is the main statute governing Fire Safety in commercial and residential premises in England and Wales.
Figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for the year ending March 2025 show:
- 2,972 formal notices issued (enforcement, prohibition and alteration notices combined), up 5.3% year on year and 29% higher than 2019-20.
- 18,351 informal notices alongside those formal actions.
- 119,610 non-statutory Fire Safety activities carried out by fire and rescue services, a 44% rise on the pre-pandemic baseline.
Responsibility for fire enforcement policy moved from the Home Office to MHCLG on 1 April 2025, bringing fire, building safety and construction product oversight under one department. The direction of travel is more enforcement, not less.
The fines are real, and they are adding up
Since the magistrates’ cap was removed in March 2015, summary conviction under the FSO has carried an unlimited fine. Crown Court can add up to two years in prison. Recent cases show sentencers using the full range.
Hind Hotel, Northamptonshire – November 2025
Hind Wellingborough Ltd was fined £75,000, plus £4,200 costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge. Total: £81,200. The trigger was a faulty Fire Alarm system that had been neglected since 2021, alongside non-compliance with an enforcement notice. Sole director Marcus Holden pleaded guilty to breaches of Articles 8, 22 and 38 of the FSO.
Home from Home Property Management Ltd, Ipswich – July 2024
The company was fined £60,000, plus £24,750 costs. Director Edward Ottley received a 10-month custodial sentence, suspended for 18 months. He was also sentenced to 120 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay £24,750 in costs personally. This was not a theoretical personal liability. He was prosecuted in his own name alongside the company.
Centenary Plaza, Birmingham – October 2025
Freehold Managers (Nominees) Limited was fined £50,000 on 16 October 2025, after Birmingham City Council prosecuted for breach of a Housing Act 2004 Improvement Notice. The notice had required Fire Door repairs, Emergency Lighting improvements and adequate means of escape.
This was only the second local authority prosecution of its kind in the country, and the first in the West Midlands. Councils are now using housing powers where fire enforcement routes are slow.
When it becomes personal
For a long time, directors assumed a company-level prosecution was the worst realistic outcome. That assumption is no longer safe.
- Edward Ottley, Ipswich – suspended custodial sentence, 120 hours unpaid work and £24,750 personal costs.
- Sawar Hussain, NAASTA takeaway, Burgess Hill – prosecuted personally by West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service in September 2025.
- Mr Wasim, Warrington, 2024 – convicted under Article 32(2)(h) for using premises for sleeping after a prohibition notice had been issued.
The pattern across these cases is consistent. Where the Responsible Person is a named individual who ignored an enforcement notice, fire and rescue services have prosecuted the person as well as the company.
What enforcement officers are actually looking for
The cases above share a common profile. Officers are not, for the most part, discovering these issues mid-fire. They are finding them during inspections, revisits after previous notices and follow-ups on reports from occupiers or former staff.
When officers return to a building, they tend to look for three things:
- Has the previous notice been acted on? If a notice was issued and ignored, the case for prosecution writes itself.
- Is the Fire Alarm system fully working and maintained? Outstanding faults, missed services and unlogged call points read as neglect on paper.
- Is the Emergency Lighting being tested? Monthly functional tests and the annual full-duration test are recorded for a reason. A blank logbook is not a neutral document in court.
Out-of-date Fire Risk Assessments, missing records of servicing and untrained staff come up repeatedly in the prosecution reports. There is also the student accommodation case of Elvet Residences Ltd in Durham. A real fire followed a Notice of Deficiencies. Only half the students evacuated, and staff reportedly told a resident not to call the fire service. That case was convicted under Article 27.
What a Responsible Person should be doing now
This is an informational overview, not legal advice. Your Fire Risk Assessment and a competent Fire Safety professional should determine your exact obligations.
That said, the practical steps that come out of these cases are straightforward:
- Check whether any enforcement notice has been issued against your building, and confirm it has been acted on and closed out.
- Make sure your Fire Alarm system is being serviced and maintained on a proper schedule, and that any faults are logged, reported and cleared.
- Confirm your Emergency Lighting is being tested monthly and duration-tested annually, with results recorded.
- Keep your Fire Risk Assessment current, and review it after any change to the building, its occupation or its use.
- Make sure whoever holds the Responsible Person role knows they hold it, and what that role involves.