🔥 Heatwave Season Fire Safety: What Building Managers and Owners Should Be Doing Now

The UK is in the middle of an extended period of hot, dry weather, and for building managers and owners, that has direct implications for fire risk. This is not a theoretical concern. Dry vegetation, combustible boundaries, unmanaged waste areas, and the growing frequency of summer lightning storms all contribute to a risk profile that is genuinely different from the one your fire risk assessment was written against, potentially months ago.

At Empyrean Fire Consultancy, we work with building owners and managers across the UK to keep their fire risk assessments current, their fire doors compliant, and their buildings safe year-round. Here is what we think every Responsible Person should be considering right now.

Your Fire Risk Assessment and the Ongoing Heatwave

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the Responsible Person to ensure their fire risk assessment remains valid. That means it must reflect the current state of the building and its environment, not just at the time it was produced, but on an ongoing basis. A prolonged dry spell materially changes the external fire risk for most buildings, and that change needs to be reflected in your assessment.

The questions to ask are straightforward. Has your FRA been reviewed in the last twelve months? Was it produced during different seasonal conditions? Does it specifically address external fire spread, including vegetation, boundary materials, and stored combustibles? If the answer to any of these is no, the current conditions are a reasonable trigger for a review.

External Fire Spread: What to Check Around Your Building

During heatwave conditions, the greatest fire risk for many managed buildings does not start inside them. Dry grass and scrub adjacent to boundary fences, timber stored against external walls, communal bins positioned close to the building fabric, and combustible decking or cladding can all provide a pathway for fire to reach the structure, or significantly accelerate its spread once it does.

Walk the perimeter of your building and ask whether any of the following apply: dry vegetation growing against or close to the boundary; combustible materials, timber, recycling, garden furniture that could act as a fuel bridge to the building envelope; external cladding, decking, or fascia materials that could carry a flame upward; bin stores not adequately separated from the main structure.

These are not obscure findings. They appear regularly in enforcement action and post-incident investigations, and they are straightforwardly preventable.

Fire Doors: The Internal Line of Defence

If fire does reach a building, correctly specified and maintained fire doors are what protect occupants and limit spread. A fire door that has been propped open, has a damaged intumescent seal, or has been fitted with incorrect ironmongery will not perform. For buildings with sleeping risks; residential blocks, HMOs, care homes, student accommodation, this is both a compliance obligation and a life safety issue.

A seasonal fire safety review is a good moment to confirm that fire door inspection records are current, that any outstanding remedial actions have been addressed, and that no practices have crept in; propping, wedging, unauthorised modifications, that compromise door performance. Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, Responsible Persons for multi-occupied residential buildings are required to undertake regular checks on fire doors in communal areas. If those checks are not documented, you are exposed.

Lightning Protection: An Overlooked Risk During Storm Season

The current heatwave is generating increasingly frequent lightning storms across the UK, and this is a risk that building owners and managers often underestimate. A direct or near lightning strike can start a fire, damage electrical systems, and disrupt fire detection and suppression equipment. For buildings where that equipment is critical, the consequences can be serious.

The relevant standard is BS EN 62305, which governs the design, installation, and maintenance of lightning protection systems in the UK. The standard does not require every building to have a lightning protection system, but it does require that a formal risk assessment is carried out to determine whether one is needed.

The buildings most likely to require lightning protection include: tall or prominent structures that are more likely to attract a strike; care homes, hospitals, and residential blocks where occupants may not be able to self-evacuate; schools, colleges, and high-occupancy buildings; historic or heritage buildings where a fire following a strike could be catastrophic; buildings housing critical electronic or electrical infrastructure; and structures in exposed or elevated locations.

Where a lightning protection system is in place, BS EN 62305 requires it to be tested and inspected annually by a competent person. Buildings classed as critical require a visual inspection every six months. If your building has a lightning protection system and you cannot confirm when it was last tested, that is a gap in your compliance record.

If your building does not have a system and you have never had a formal lightning risk assessment carried out, it is worth knowing whether one is warranted. As part of our broader fire safety consultancy service, we can advise on whether a lightning risk assessment should be part of your building's safety review.

The Wider Picture: Keeping Pace with Changing Conditions

The common thread across all of this is that fire risk is not static. The conditions that make heatwave season genuinely more hazardous, dry vegetation, lightning activity, increased occupancy of communal outdoor areas, heightened risk of deliberate ignition, are predictable and manageable if you are ahead of them. The Responsible Persons who face enforcement action, or worse, are typically those whose fire risk management did not keep pace with conditions.

The Building Safety Act 2022 has raised the competence bar for Responsible Persons and the organisations they appoint. Documented, proactive engagement with your building's fire risk profile, including seasonal reviews, fire door inspections, and periodic reassessment of systems like lightning protection is the standard of due diligence that is now expected.