How often should fire doors be inspected?

It is one of the most common questions building owners ask, and the answer has both a legal minimum and a good-practice recommendation. Getting the rhythm right keeps you compliant and, more importantly, keeps the doors actually working.

Start with the law. The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 set clear minimums for residential buildings over 11 metres tall: the responsible person must check fire doors in the common parts at least every three months, and make best endeavours to check flat entrance doors at least annually. These are floors, not ceilings — there is nothing stopping you checking more often, and in many buildings you should.

Beyond that legal baseline, recognised good practice — reflected in standards such as BS 9999 — recommends inspecting fire doors roughly every six months. Newly installed doors are often worth a check a little sooner, within the first few months, to catch any settling-in issues while they are still easy to put right.

The right frequency for any given door also depends on how hard it works. A fire door in a busy school corridor, a care home or a block of flats is opened hundreds of times a day, knocked by trolleys and pushed by crowds — it will drift out of adjustment far faster than a rarely used door in a quiet plant room. As a rule of thumb, the higher the traffic and the higher the risk, the more often the door should be looked at.

A simple way to think about it: communal and high-traffic doors on a quarterly cycle, most other doors at least every six months, flat entrance doors annually, and any new or recently repaired door checked again shortly after the work. Building that schedule into an asset register means the dates look after themselves and nothing is missed.

Between formal inspections, it is also worth encouraging everyone in the building to report obvious problems — a door that no longer closes, a damaged seal, a wedge holding a door open. These informal checks cost nothing and catch faults long before the next scheduled survey.

If you are not sure when your doors were last properly inspected, that is the strongest possible sign that now is the time. A single survey establishes the baseline, and from there a sensible schedule keeps you both safe and compliant.

Book an inspection and set up a schedule that fits your building.