Compliance & enforcement
No fire safety log book — starting one that stands up
There is no maintenance record for the building's fire safety equipment.
Plan it properly
Short answer
You cannot backdate records you do not have, and you should not try. The correct approach is to test and inspect everything now, record the current condition, and run the log forward from that date with the correct intervals.
What goes in it
A usable log book covers the routine checks and the professional visits:
- Weekly fire alarm test — date, call point used, result, tester.
- Monthly emergency lighting function test, and the annual duration test.
- Fire door checks at the interval your risk assessment or the 2022 regulations set.
- Extinguisher visual checks between annual services.
- Professional servicing visits, certificates and any defects raised.
- Evacuation drills, false alarm events and any system disablements.
Starting from nothing, honestly
Where a building has no history, we carry out a baseline: alarm service and test, extinguisher service, a fire door condition schedule and an emergency lighting check. That produces a dated snapshot. The log then runs forward from that date, and the snapshot itself is the evidence that you took ownership of the position rather than ignoring it.
Faults belong in it too
A log book that only ever records successful tests is less believable than one that records a fault, the interim measure taken, and the date it was fixed. Inspectors read for that pattern.
Paper or digital
Either is acceptable provided the records are available on request and completed by the people who actually did the checks. What matters is that it is kept up, not what it is kept in.
Questions we get asked about this
Who should complete the weekly test?
A nominated person on site with brief training. It is a simple task, but it needs to be somebody's named responsibility or it lapses.
How long should records be kept?
Keep them for the life of the system where practical; three years is a common minimum expectation for routine testing records.
Do you supply a log book with servicing?
We complete the site log book at each visit and can set one up where none exists.
We can baseline the whole building in one visit and hand you a log book that starts from a known position.
Other common fire safety problems
Fire alarms
Fire alarm keeps beeping — what the sound is telling you
Fire alarms
Repeated false alarms — finding the cause instead of living with it
Fire alarms
Amber fault light on the fire alarm panel — how to read it
Fire doors
Fire door gaps that are too big — tolerances and remedies
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