The flats are private dwellings. The hall, the stairs and the bin store are not, and that is where your duty sits.
The common parts of a block of flats or a converted house, the hall, stairs, landings and bin and meter stores, fall under the Fire Safety Order, and the landlord or managing agent is the responsible person. The assessment covers those shared areas, the flat entrance doors that open onto them and the evacuation strategy, usually stay put, rather than the inside of each flat.
This is the part that causes the arguments, so it is worth being exact about it.
Entrance hall, stairs, landings, corridors, bin and cycle stores, meter cupboards, plant rooms, shared lofts and any external escape route. The Fire Safety Order applies here and somebody is the responsible person for it.
A flat let to a single household is a private dwelling and sits outside the Order. That does not make it irrelevant, because what happens inside it is exactly what the common parts have to survive.
It is the wall between the two. It is also the element most often replaced by a resident with something that looks similar and does nothing.
Where a freeholder, a managing agent and commercial tenants all control part of the same building, the law expects you to co-ordinate. In practice the person who receives the letter is the one who has to sort it out.
Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Haverfordwest have a lot of this stock, and licensing officers here are active.
A Type 1 assessment of the common parts, recorded in full as the law has required in Wales since 1 October 2023, with a numbered action plan ranked by priority. If we think the building needs more than a Type 1, the report says why rather than simply upselling you.
Separately from the Fire Safety Order, the Renting Homes (Wales) fitness requirements have applied since 1 December 2022 inside the dwellings: mains-wired interlinked smoke alarms on every storey, carbon monoxide alarms in any room with a fuel-burning appliance, and an electrical condition report every five years. Different law, same visit.
The common parts do. The Fire Safety Order applies to the entrance hall, stairs, landings, bin stores, plant rooms and any shared roof space. The inside of an individual flat, let to a single household, is a private dwelling and outside the Order. That split is the thing most freeholders and management companies get wrong in both directions.
It is a scale of how intrusive the assessment is. Type 1 is non-destructive and covers the common parts only, which is the usual starting point. Type 2 adds limited destructive inspection of the construction. Types 3 and 4 extend into the flats themselves, sampled or in full. Most blocks in Pembrokeshire need a Type 1, and the assessment should say plainly why anything more is or is not justified.
It means the building was designed so that a fire in one flat is contained there for long enough that everyone else is safer indoors than in the stairwell. It only holds if the compartmentation holds. If flat entrance doors have been swapped for ordinary doors, or a service riser has been opened up and never sealed, the strategy has quietly stopped being true and nobody has told the residents.
Usually the freeholder, or the managing agent acting for them. If you own a converted terrace and let the flats, that is you. Buying the building does not transfer the duty to the tenants, and a letting agent collecting rent does not automatically take it on either.
In most converted or purpose-built blocks they are the single most important element in the building, because they are what keeps a fire inside one flat. They need to be fire-rated, self-closing, and actually closing. Residents fitting their own front door is the most common defect we see.
Where the duty sits when you let rooms rather than whole flats.
Five minutes, no equipment, and it is the commonest finding we make.
There is no fixed interval in law. Here is what actually triggers a review.
Tell us the building and we will give you a price on the phone. Most assessments are booked within the week.