Who Is Liable for HMO Fire Safety When a Letting Agent Manages It

If your HMO fails a fire safety inspection, the council does not knock on the letting agent's door. It knocks on yours. Landlords hand fire doors, alarm testing and fire risk assessments to a managing agent every day, and then discover during a licence renewal or a prohibition notice that the agent's failure was, in law, their failure too.

This catches out landlords who assume that paying an agent a management fee buys them out of fire safety risk. It does not, unless the paperwork says so in specific terms, and even then the protection is often weaker than landlords expect.

Who the law actually calls the "responsible person"

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRO 2005), duties for fire safety in an HMO's common parts fall on the "responsible person". Article 3 defines this as whoever has control of the premises in connection with carrying on a trade, business or other undertaking. For most HMOs that is the landlord, because it is the landlord who lets the rooms as a business.

A letting or managing agent is not automatically the responsible person just because they hold the keys and collect the rent. They only pick up that legal status where they have genuinely taken on control of the premises, and the extent of that control is a question of fact, not just a line in a contract. Read our full breakdown of who counts as the responsible person under UK fire safety law if you are unsure where you stand.

Critically, the RRO 2005 allows for more than one responsible person at the same premises. Article 22 requires each of them to cooperate and coordinate with the others. That means a landlord and an agent can both carry duties simultaneously, and a court will not accept "I thought the agent was doing it" as a defence unless the landlord can show they took reasonable steps to check.

What "control" actually looks like to an inspector

Environmental health officers and fire and rescue services look at who instructs contractors, who holds the fire risk assessment, who authorises repairs to fire doors and alarms, and who occupiers are told to contact in an emergency. If those threads all lead to you as landlord, an inspector will treat you as the responsible person regardless of what your management agreement says on paper.

Why delegating management does not automatically delegate liability

Many management agreements state, in general terms, that the agent will "manage the property" or "handle compliance". That wording is not enough to transfer the responsible person role under the RRO 2005. Fire safety liability only shifts, or is shared, where the agreement specifically and explicitly assigns fire risk assessment, alarm maintenance, fire door inspection and record keeping to the agent, and the agent has the authority and budget to act on that.

Even a well-drafted agreement does not remove your exposure entirely. Landlords remain the party a council will usually pursue first, because the licence is normally held in the landlord's name and the property is registered against the landlord for planning and tax purposes. An agent's contractual promise to handle fire safety is worth exactly as much as the agent's competence and solvency, and nothing more, if things go wrong.

The separate Housing Act 2004 duties on "the manager"

Alongside the RRO 2005, the Housing Act 2004 creates its own set of duties that can apply to letting agents directly. Section 263 defines "the person managing" an HMO as the person who receives rent or other payments from occupiers, whether that is the owner or someone acting on the owner's behalf, such as a managing agent.

The Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 place obligations on that manager to keep common parts, fire doors, fire alarms and escape routes in good order and free from obstruction. This means an agent who collects rent and controls the day to day running of an HMO can be prosecuted under the Housing Act 2004 in their own right, separately from any action taken against the landlord under the RRO 2005.

If your HMO requires a licence under Housing Act 2004 mandatory or additional licensing, fire safety conditions attach directly to that licence. Failing to meet them, or letting an FRA lapse, can lead to enforcement action and can jeopardise licence renewal regardless of who was contractually meant to be looking after it. See what happens when a fire risk assessment is missing or out of date for the enforcement routes councils actually use.

What to put in the management agreement

If you use an agent, get specific. A vague reference to "compliance" is not a fire safety plan. Your agreement should say, in plain terms, who commissions and pays for the fire risk assessment, who books and pays for annual fire alarm servicing under BS 5839-6, who inspects fire doors and how often, and who is responsible for interlinked smoke and heat alarm testing under the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2022.

It should also say who holds the paperwork. Since 1 October 2023, section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 removed the old exemption for small premises: every responsible person must record their fire risk assessment in writing, with no headcount threshold below which a verbal or informal assessment will do. If your agent holds that written record, you still need your own copy, because you cannot demonstrate compliance to a council using a document you cannot produce.

Finally, set a review trigger. A fire risk assessment carried out under BS 9792:2025 is not a one-off certificate. It needs reviewing when the property changes use, when works are carried out, or at the interval the assessment itself recommends, and your agreement should say clearly whose job that is.

Questions to ask before you sign an agent on

Ask what fire safety qualifications the agent's staff hold, whether they use a named, insured fire risk assessor or do it themselves, and whether they will forward you a copy of every assessment, test certificate and repair invoice as it happens rather than on request. An agent who cannot answer these clearly is not one you should be trusting with a legal duty that ultimately still sits with you.

Portfolio landlords using multiple agents

If you run several HMOs through different agents, or split management and lettings between two firms, the risk multiplies. Each property can end up with a different assumed division of fire safety duties, and nobody holding a full picture. Keep a simple central log, even a spreadsheet, that names the agent, the fire risk assessor and the alarm servicing contractor for each property, with renewal dates. That single document is often the difference between spotting a lapsed assessment before a council inspection and finding out about it during one.

What happens when it goes wrong

Where a fire safety failure is found, councils and fire and rescue authorities can issue an enforcement notice or a prohibition notice restricting or banning use of part or all of the building until defects are fixed. Article 32 of the RRO 2005 carries an unlimited fine on conviction, and on indictment a responsible person can face up to two years' imprisonment for a serious breach. Company directors, partners and senior managers can be prosecuted personally where an offence happened with their consent, connivance or neglect, not just the letting business as an entity.

None of that liability disappears because you paid someone else to manage the property. If anything, splitting management between a landlord and an agent tends to create gaps, because each side can genuinely believe the other has it covered. That is precisely the situation Article 22's cooperation duty exists to prevent, and precisely the situation inspectors are trained to spot.

Next steps

Do not rely on assumption. Get your management agreement in writing with fire safety duties named explicitly, keep your own copy of every fire risk assessment and test record, and check in with your agent before every licence renewal rather than after a problem is found.

FRASafe guides you through a BS 9792:2025-aligned fire risk assessment, free to complete, with a council-ready PDF for £45, so you hold your own compliant record regardless of what your agent provides.