Fire Door Inspection Reports: What to Include and How to Structure Them

A fire door inspection isn't complete when you put down the clipboard. It's complete when you have a report that someone else — a regulator, an insurer, a BSR assessor — can pick up and understand without asking you questions. Most managing agents do the inspection well enough. Where things fall apart is the reporting.

Under regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, there's no prescribed format for fire door inspection records. The regulations require inspections to happen at the right frequency and require you to provide information to residents — but the format of the evidence is up to you. That flexibility means many managing agents end up with inconsistent records that are difficult to present when someone asks for them.

This guide covers what a fire door inspection report should contain, how to structure it, and how to make your reports useful for the three audiences that actually read them.

Who Reads Fire Door Inspection Reports?

Your inspection reports serve three distinct audiences, each looking for different things:

Fire and rescue authority inspectors

When an inspector visits under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, they want to see that a system exists. They'll check:

• Are inspections happening at the right frequency (quarterly communal, annual flat entrance)?
• Is there a consistent inspection method (the same checks on every door)?
• Are defects being tracked through to resolution?
• How long does it take between finding a defect and fixing it?

They're less interested in the format and more interested in completeness and consistency.

Insurance companies

Buildings insurance often includes fire safety compliance as a condition. Insurers checking fire door compliance want:

• Evidence that inspections are happening as legally required
• A summary of the building's fire door condition (how many pass, how many fail, what's the remediation status)
• Proof that critical defects are being prioritised and resolved

Some insurers specifically ask for fire door inspection records at renewal. Having a structured report saves time and demonstrates compliance more convincingly than forwarding a spreadsheet.

BSR assessors (for buildings over 18m)

The Building Safety Regulator's Joint Inspection Team conducts multi-disciplinary assessments. Fire door records form part of the Building Safety Case. BSR assessors want:

• A complete door inventory per building
• Inspection history over time (not just the latest round)
• Remediation tracking showing every defect through to closure
• Evidence of a maintenance system, not just reactive inspections

For more on BSR assessments and the Building Safety Case, see our guide to the Building Safety Act and fire doors.

The Structure of a Fire Door Inspection Report

A useful inspection report has four sections. This structure works for both quarterly communal inspections and annual flat entrance inspections.

Section 1: Building Summary

Start with the building-level context. This is the cover page of your report:

• Building name and address
• Building height / number of storeys (determines which regulations apply)
• Responsible Person (the individual or organisation responsible for fire safety)
• Inspection type — quarterly communal or annual flat entrance
• Inspection date(s)
• Inspector name and role (caretaker, managing agent, fire safety contractor)
• Total fire doors inspected / total fire doors in scope
• Summary result — overall pass/fail count, critical defects count

This summary lets anyone scanning the report understand the scope and key findings without reading every door record.

Section 2: Per-Door Inspection Record

This is the core of the report — one record per fire door inspected. Each record should cover:

Door identification:

• Location (floor, corridor, exact position — "3rd floor east stairwell" not just "stairwell")
• Door type (FD30 or FD60)
• Fire rating label present? (yes/no)
• Door tag or reference number (if you've implemented a numbering system)

Inspection findings (pass/fail per check):

• Door leaf condition (cracks, splits, warping, delamination, unauthorised modifications)
• Intumescent seals (present, continuous, undamaged, not painted over)
• Cold smoke seals (present, not flattened or hardened)
• Gaps (consistent 3-4mm, no excessive gaps)
• Hinges (minimum 3, all screws present, no sagging)
• Self-closing device (door closes fully into frame, latch engages)
• Signage ("Fire Door Keep Shut" present and legible)
• Glazing (if present — fire-rated glass, intact beading)

Overall door result: Pass / Fail

Defects found: For each defect, record:

• What the defect is (specific — "intumescent strip missing from top edge, full length" not "seal issue")
• Priority (critical / important / monitor)
• Photo reference

For the full list of inspection checks, see our 15-point inspection checklist guide or generate a per-building checklist.

Section 3: Defect Summary and Remediation Status

After the per-door records, pull out a summary of all defects across the building:

Door Ref	Location	Defect	Priority	Status	Date Found	Date Fixed	Contractor

This table is what regulators scan first. It shows at a glance:

• How many defects are outstanding
• How long defects have been waiting for resolution
• Whether critical defects are being prioritised over minor ones
• Who is doing the work

Update this table as remediation progresses — it becomes a living document between inspection rounds.

For detailed guidance on managing the remediation workflow, see our guide to fire door remedials.

Section 4: Notes and Actions

The final section captures anything that doesn't fit the per-door format:

• Access issues — for annual flat entrance inspections, list every flat where access was not gained and summarise the best endeavours contact trail
• Systemic issues — if the same defect appears on 80% of doors (e.g., all smoke seals deteriorated), note this as a building-wide issue rather than treating it as 80 individual defects
• Recommendations — anything beyond individual defect remediation: a suggestion for a building-wide seal replacement programme, a recommendation to re-inspect a specific door in 4 weeks, or a note that the building's door inventory is incomplete
• Next inspection due — the date the next quarterly or annual inspection should take place

Making Reports Consistent Across a Portfolio

The per-building report structure above works for one building. The portfolio-level challenge is consistency: every building's report should follow the same format, use the same defect categories, and apply the same priority criteria.

Why consistency matters:

• A regulator inspecting Building C will expect the same quality of records as Building A
• Insurance renewals often cover multiple buildings — inconsistent reporting across buildings looks worse than consistent reporting showing some issues
• If you hand off a building to another managing agent (or bring a new building onto your portfolio), consistent report formats reduce the transition overhead

How to achieve it:

• Use the same checklist for every inspection (the per-door inspection record above, or our checklist generator which produces a standardised format)
• Define your defect priorities once and apply them everywhere (the critical/important/monitor framework from our remedials guide is a practical starting point)
• Use the same building summary template for every report
• Number your doors consistently: a simple system like [Building code]-[Floor]-[Door number] (e.g., BLK-A-03-07) makes cross-referencing defects between inspection rounds straightforward

What a Bad Report Looks Like

Common problems with fire door inspection reports that managing agents produce:

The email chain report — inspection findings recorded in an email from the caretaker to the managing agent. No consistent format. Defects described in conversational language. Photos attached to emails, not linked to specific doors. Impossible to extract a defect summary or demonstrate a system.

The single spreadsheet — one large spreadsheet with every door on every building on different tabs, but no summary view. Difficult for anyone outside the organisation to navigate. No distinction between current defects and resolved ones. Remediation status tracked by changing cell colours.

The contractor report — a fire door inspection contractor provides a detailed technical report for each building, but in their own format. Each building's report looks different if you use different contractors. No integration with your own remediation tracking.

The photo dump — 200 photos in a shared drive with filenames like "IMG_3847.jpg". No labels, no door references, no written findings. Photos alone are not an inspection record.

All of these contain the raw information, but none of them would satisfy a regulator asking "show me your system for managing fire door compliance."

Digital vs Paper Reports

The government guidance on regulation 10 says the quarterly checks "should be simple and basic" and can be performed by "caretakers, managing agents, housing officers and maintenance personnel" with appropriate instruction. That simplicity should extend to the reporting.

Paper still works — for a small portfolio (2-3 buildings), a printed checklist taken on-site, filled in by hand, and filed in a building folder is a perfectly adequate inspection record. The key is consistency: use the same checklist every time, photograph defects, and maintain the defect summary table separately.

Digital is better at scale — once you manage more than 5 buildings, the volume of per-door records, defect tracking, and remediation evidence starts to overwhelm paper filing. Digital records are searchable, exportable, and easier to produce when a regulator or insurer asks for them.

What matters isn't the medium — it's whether you can produce a complete, consistent, per-building compliance file within 10 minutes of being asked.

FireDoorReady is being built to generate structured inspection reports automatically — every inspection recorded in the app produces a per-building report in the format regulators and insurers expect, with defect tracking through to resolution. Join the waitlist →

This guidance applies to England. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have separate fire safety legislation and reporting requirements.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. Consult a fire safety professional or legal adviser for advice specific to your buildings.

Sources

• Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, regulation 10 — legislation.gov.uk
• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — legislation.gov.uk
• Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022: fire door guidance — GOV.UK