Sharing Fire Safety Duties: Cooperation Between Responsible Persons (RRO 2005)

Fire safety law assumes a single accountable person in a simple building. Real buildings are rarely that simple. A shared office block, a shopping centre, a block of flats above shops, or a business park with several tenants each has multiple owners, landlords, and occupiers — and therefore potentially more than one responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. When duties overlap, the law does not let anyone off the hook. Instead, Articles 21 and 22 of the RRO 2005 require responsible persons to cooperate and coordinate. This guide explains how that works in practice.

Can there be more than one responsible person?

Yes. The responsible person is defined in Article 3 as the person who has control of the premises in connection with a trade, business, or undertaking, or the owner where no one else has that control. In a multi-occupied building, the landlord may be the responsible person for the structure and common parts, while each tenant is the responsible person for their own unit. In a managed building, a managing agent or facilities company may exercise control on the landlord's behalf.

Where two or more people share responsibility for the same premises or the same risks, they are joint responsible persons. Each remains individually accountable for meeting the relevant duties.

The duty to cooperate (Article 22)

Article 22 requires each responsible person, where he shares premises with another responsible person, to cooperate with the other so far as is necessary to enable them both to comply with the Order. Cooperation is not a vague courtesy — it is a legal duty. Practical examples include:

• Sharing the fire risk assessment findings that affect shared areas.
• Coordinating fire drills and evacuation procedures so they do not conflict.
• Agreeing who maintains the common escape routes, fire alarm, and emergency lighting.
• Informing each other of changes of use, refurbishment, or new hazards.

A tenant who installs a heavy appliance that increases fire loading, or a landlord who alters the stairwell, must tell the other party so the shared assessment stays valid.

The duty to provide information (Article 22 and Article 21)

Articles 21 and 22 also require responsible persons to give each other the information they need to comply. If your activities create a risk to people in another part of the building, the other responsible person must know about it. Equally, the person controlling the common parts must give tenants the information they need about evacuation and fire precautions.

This duty is reinforced for high-rise residential buildings by the post-Grenfell amendments, which require responsible persons to provide structured fire safety information to residents and to fire and rescue services.

Common parts and the "shared premises" problem

The most frequent failure in multi-occupied buildings is the gap in the common parts: the landlord assumes the tenants' assessments cover the stairs, and the tenants assume the landlord does. Under the RRO 2005, the responsible person for the common parts (usually the landlord or managing agent) must assess and maintain those areas. Tenants remain responsible for their own units. The solution is explicit allocation in writing — a schedule of responsibility — backed by a shared or coordinated assessment.

Who takes the lead?

The Order does not appoint a "lead" responsible person, but in practice the enforcing authority will look to whoever has the greatest control over the relevant risk. For the building fabric and shared systems, that is typically the landlord or managing agent. For activities within a unit, it is the tenant. Cooperation clauses exist precisely because neither can fully comply alone.

Enforcement when cooperation fails

Where responsible persons do not cooperate, the result is usually an inadequate or missing assessment of the shared risks, which is an offence under Article 32. Inspectors commonly find:

• No one owning the fire alarm that serves multiple units.
• Blocked common escape routes no single party maintains.
• Conflicting evacuation strategies (e.g. simultaneous versus phased) across tenants.
• Assessments that stop at the unit door and ignore the stairs and final exit.

Any of these can lead to improvement or prohibition notices against one or more responsible persons — and each is individually liable.

Practical steps for multi-occupied buildings

• Identify every responsible person and record them in the assessment.
• Agree a written schedule of responsibilities for common parts and shared systems.
• Carry out a coordinated fire risk assessment that covers shared risks, or ensure individual assessments cross-reference each other.
• Share significant findings and action plans between parties.
• Run joint fire drills where evacuation is shared.
• Review whenever a tenant changes, refurbishes, or alters their use.

How HawkSwift supports shared buildings

At HawkSwift Ltd, we regularly assess multi-occupied and mixed-use premises where several responsible persons share risk. Our NEBOSH-qualified assessors map the responsibilities clearly, flag the common-part gaps that trigger enforcement, and produce a court-defensible, PAS 79 / RRO 2005-aligned report that every party can act on. We can also advise landlords and managing agents on the cooperation and information duties under Articles 21 and 22.

Fire risk assessments start from £199 + VAT with a 48-hour turnaround. Book your fire risk assessment or contact our team to clarify who is responsible for what in your building.

*This article is general guidance based on the RRO 2005 and is not formal legal advice. For a premises-specific assessment, book a HawkSwift visit.*