How the Fire Safety Act 2021 Changed Compliance for Manchester Building Owners

How the Fire Safety Act 2021 Changed Compliance for Manchester Building Owners

The Fire Safety Act 2021 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021 and came into force on 16 May 2022. It was the first major legislative response to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, and it changed the scope of fire safety law for every multi-occupied residential building in England and Wales. If you own, manage or are the responsible person for any building containing two or more sets of domestic premises, the Act applies to you — and the enforcement consequences for non-compliance have been significant.

Five years on, many Manchester building owners and managing agents still do not fully understand what the Act changed. This guide explains the specific changes, who is affected, what action is required, and how enforcement has played out in Greater Manchester since the Act took effect.

What the Fire Safety Act 2021 Actually Changed

The Act is short — just two substantive sections — but its effect is substantial. It amends the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the Fire Safety Order, or FSO) to clarify two things that were previously disputed:

1. The Structure, External Walls and Common Parts Are In Scope

Before the Act, there was ambiguity about whether the Fire Safety Order applied to the structure and external walls of a residential building, and specifically to the external wall system (including cladding, insulation and balconies). Some responsible persons argued that the FSO only applied to the common internal parts of a building — corridors, stairwells, lobbies — and that the external walls and structure fell outside its scope.

The Fire Safety Act removed this ambiguity. The FSO now explicitly applies to:

• The structure of the building — walls, floors, ceilings and roof, insofar as they are relevant to fire safety
• The external walls of the building — including cladding, insulation, balcony structures and anything attached to the external face
• Any common parts — corridors, stairwells, lobbies, plant rooms, bin stores, car parks and any other area that is not within an individual dwelling
• The doors between domestic premises and common parts — flat entrance doors

This last point is particularly important. Before the Act, flat entrance doors occupied a grey area. They are not part of the common parts (they belong to the individual flat), but they are not entirely within the dwelling either (they open onto the common escape route). The Act clarifies that flat entrance doors fall within the scope of the Fire Safety Order and must be included in the fire risk assessment.

2. The Responsible Person Must Assess These Elements

The Act does not create new duties. It clarifies that the existing duty under Article 9 of the Fire Safety Order — to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment — applies to all of the above elements. This means:

• The fire risk assessment for a multi-occupied residential building must now explicitly assess the external walls, structure and flat entrance doors
• Where the assessment identifies risks, the responsible person must implement measures to reduce or eliminate those risks
• The assessment must be reviewed and updated regularly, and whenever there is reason to believe it is no longer valid

In practical terms, this means that a fire risk assessment that only examines the common corridors and stairwells — which was common practice before the Act — is now non-compliant. The assessor must also consider the external wall system and the condition and fire resistance of every flat entrance door.

Who Is Affected

The Act applies to every building in England and Wales that contains two or more sets of domestic premises. This includes:

• Purpose-built blocks of flats — from two-storey maisonette blocks to high-rise towers
• Converted houses — Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses divided into flats, which are common across Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Tameside
• HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) — where the building is not divided into self-contained flats but contains multiple separate households
• Mixed-use buildings — buildings with commercial premises on the ground floor and residential above, which are widespread along Manchester's high streets and in the Northern Quarter
• Build to Rent developments — large-scale purpose-built rental buildings, of which Manchester has more than any city outside London
• Student accommodation — both purpose-built and converted buildings

The responsible person is typically the building owner, the freeholder, the managing agent or the employer (if the building is also a workplace). In many Manchester buildings, the responsible person is a residents' management company (RMC) whose directors are leaseholders with limited fire safety expertise — a situation that the Act has made considerably more demanding.

Flat Entrance Doors: The Practical Impact

The inclusion of flat entrance doors in the Fire Safety Order has had the most visible day-to-day impact. Before the Act, many managing agents and freeholders did not inspect or maintain flat entrance doors, considering them the responsibility of the individual leaseholder or tenant.

Under the Act, the responsible person must:

Assess the condition of every flat entrance door. This means checking that each door is a certified fire door of the correct rating (typically FD30 — 30 minutes fire resistance — or FD60 for buildings over 30 metres tall), that the door closer works correctly, that intumescent strips and smoke seals are intact, that the door fits squarely in its frame with consistent gaps, and that the hinges and latch are functional.

Maintain flat entrance doors. Where an assessment identifies deficiencies — a missing closer, damaged seals, a warped frame — the responsible person must arrange repairs. This applies even though the door may be the leaseholder's property under the terms of the lease. The Fire Safety Order overrides the lease in this respect: the responsible person has a statutory duty to maintain fire safety measures regardless of the ownership structure.

Replace non-compliant doors. If a flat entrance door is not a certified fire door — which is common in older converted buildings and in some purpose-built blocks where doors have been replaced by occupants with non-fire-rated alternatives — the responsible person must arrange replacement with a compliant door.

Typical costs for flat entrance door compliance:

• Inspection and assessment per door: £30 to £60
• Door closer replacement: £80 to £150 installed
• Intumescent strip and smoke seal replacement: £50 to £100 per door
• Full FD30 fire door replacement: £600 to £1,200 per door installed (including frame, ironmongery and certification)
• Full FD60 fire door replacement: £800 to £1,600 per door installed

For a 50-unit apartment building where 15 doors need replacement and 20 need remedial work, the total cost can reach £15,000 to £25,000 — a significant unbudgeted expenditure for many management companies and freeholders.

External Wall Assessments

For buildings over 11 metres in height, the Act's clarification of external wall scope interacts with the Building Safety Act 2022, which requires an External Wall System (EWS) assessment. The responsible person must understand the construction of the external wall, identify any fire safety risks and, where necessary, commission remediation.

In Manchester, this has been particularly significant for:

• Post-war tower blocks with later-applied external wall insulation
• 2000s-era apartment buildings with composite cladding systems
• Converted mill buildings with external insulation added during conversion
• Build to Rent developments completed before the tightening of cladding regulations

The cost of external wall remediation varies enormously — from £50,000 for minor works to several million pounds for full cladding replacement on a large building. Government remediation funds are available for some buildings, but the application process is complex and many Manchester buildings are still waiting for funding decisions.

Enforcement in Greater Manchester

Since the Act came into force, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has increased its enforcement activity in multi-occupied residential buildings. Enforcement actions include:

Informal notifications identifying deficiencies and requesting voluntary remediation within a specified timeframe.

Enforcement notices under Article 30 of the Fire Safety Order, requiring specific actions to be taken by a deadline. Failure to comply with an enforcement notice is a criminal offence.

Prohibition notices under Article 31, prohibiting or restricting the use of all or part of a building where there is an imminent risk of serious personal injury. In residential buildings, this can mean requiring the evacuation of occupied flats — a drastic measure that GMFRS has used in cases of extreme non-compliance.

Prosecution for serious or persistent breaches. Fines are unlimited in the Crown Court, and custodial sentences are available for the most serious offences.

The Act also expanded the power of fire and rescue authorities to hold individuals personally liable. A director of a management company, a named managing agent or a sole-trader landlord can be personally prosecuted for fire safety failings under their watch.

What You Should Do Now

If you are the responsible person for a multi-occupied residential building in Manchester, the following actions should be completed if they have not been already:

1. Commission an updated fire risk assessment that explicitly covers external walls, building structure and flat entrance doors — not just the common internal areas. 2. Inspect every flat entrance door for fire rating, closer function, seal condition, gap dimensions and general integrity. 3. Create a door maintenance programme to address deficiencies identified in the inspection and to ensure ongoing compliance. 4. Review your external wall construction and commission an EWS assessment if the building is over 11 metres tall and does not already have one. 5. Update your fire safety file with the results of all assessments, inspections and remedial work. 6. Review your emergency lighting and fire alarm systems to ensure they cover all areas now within scope, including flat entrance corridors and any areas affected by external wall works.

Manchester Compliance Can Help

Manchester Compliance carries out fire safety electrical work — emergency lighting, fire alarm systems, fire door electromagnetic hold-open devices and associated wiring — for multi-occupied residential and commercial buildings across Greater Manchester. While we do not carry out fire risk assessments (this is a specialist assessor role), we work alongside fire risk assessors to implement the electrical recommendations that arise from their reports.

If your fire risk assessment has identified the need for emergency lighting upgrades, fire alarm modifications, or fire door hold-open installations, we can help.

Call us on 0161 706 1360 or email hello@manchestercompliance.co.uk.

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