UCL Launches New Fire Safety and Building Risk Management Standard
UCL has approved a new Fire Safety and Building Risk Management Standard. Here is what it covers, the law behind it, and what building owners of any size can learn from it.
INFIRISK Team·4 min read·
University College London has approved a new Fire Safety and Building Risk Management Standard, setting out in one document what senior managers and duty holders must do to keep its buildings, staff, students and visitors safe. The standard was signed off on 15 June 2026 and, while it is written for one of the country's largest university estates, the thinking behind it applies to almost any organisation that runs a non-domestic building.
What UCL has published
According to UCL Estates, the standard "outlines UCL's approach to managing fire safety and building risks across the estate" and sets out the responsibilities of duty holders and senior managers. It ties those responsibilities to four clear goals: statutory compliance, life safety, property protection and business continuity.
It was not written in isolation. The document went through consultation with stakeholders and was approved by three separate bodies, the Fire Safety Sub Committee, the Work and Health Safety Committee and the University Management Committee, before it was published. UCL's Fire Safety Team is now running briefing sessions so the people named as duty holders understand what is expected of them in practice.
Why it has landed now
Fire safety law for buildings in England has moved a long way in the past five years, and organisations with large or complex estates are updating their internal rules to keep pace. UCL says the revised standard "reflects changes in legislation" and updates job titles so responsibilities line up with how the organisation is actually run today.
Three pieces of law sit behind that shift. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 remains the backbone, placing the duty on a "responsible person" to assess and manage fire risk in non-domestic premises. The Building Safety Act 2022 then introduced a tougher regime for higher-risk buildings and a clearer chain of accountability. Alongside it, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 added specific duties around information sharing, signage and cooperation between responsible persons in multi-occupied buildings.
Read together, these create a simple expectation: someone must own fire safety for each building, they must be able to show what they have done, and they must keep doing it. A written standard like UCL's is how a large organisation turns that legal expectation into day-to-day practice.
Why it matters beyond universities
It would be easy to file this under "higher education" and move on, but the duty-holder model at the heart of the standard is the same one that applies to a landlord with three commercial units, a care provider running a handful of homes, or a firm that owns its own office. The scale differs. The legal duty does not.
What UCL has done well is put the responsibility in writing, name who holds it, and connect it to statutory compliance rather than treating fire safety as a facilities afterthought. That is a useful template for any organisation that has grown to the point where "we know who deals with that" is no longer a good enough answer.
Practical takeaways for smaller organisations
You do not need a university estates department to borrow the good parts of this approach. If you are the responsible person for one building or several, these steps translate directly:
Name your duty holder in writing. Fire safety fails when everyone assumes someone else owns it. Put a name against each building.
Keep your fire risk assessment current, not just on file. The Fire Safety Order requires it to be reviewed regularly and after any material change to the building or how it is used.
Check whether the Building Safety Act or the 2022 regulations add duties for your building, particularly if it is high-rise, multi-occupied or residential above commercial.
Write down your standard, however short. A one-page policy that says who does what, how often, and what records you keep beats an unwritten routine that leaves with the person who ran it.
Book the briefing. UCL is training its duty holders rather than emailing a PDF. Make sure the people responsible in your organisation actually understand their duties.
The bottom line
UCL's new standard is not a headline-grabbing reform, and that is rather the point. It is a large organisation quietly bringing its fire safety governance up to date with the law and making responsibility explicit. For fire safety professionals it is a reminder of where the sector is heading, and for building owners of any size it is a working example of how to turn a legal duty into something people actually do.
