Policy paper

Fire Engineers Advisory Panel: Authoritative Statement

Published 17 December 2025

Purpose

In response to the recommendations of the Phase 2 report from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry (‘the Inquiry’), the government established the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel (‘the Panel’) in April 2025. The Inquiry recommended that the Panel should produce an Authoritative Statement of the knowledge and skills to be expected of a competent fire engineer, as part of the overarching recommendation that fire engineers should become a regulated profession. Aside from this primary aim, the panel was also asked to look at the wider context of the fire engineering profession, including education, role and responsibilities, behaviours, experience and skills.

In producing this statement, the Panel has grounded its work in a respectful acknowledgment of the devastating loss of life at Grenfell Tower and the profound societal impact that the tragedy continues to have. It does not prescribe a competency framework or detailed standards but aims to:

• present a coherent and positive vision for the future state of the regulated fire engineering profession and those who work in it
• provide a guide for any future regulatory body, education institution delivering accredited fire engineering qualifications and other stakeholders in the fire safety sector
• steer the fire engineering profession to take proactive steps to consider and strengthen its own competencies and ethics ahead of the introduction of legal requirements, including the regulation of title and function

Through the Panel’s research and engagement with stakeholders, there has been broad consensus that the approach set out is sensible, urgently required and challenging to achieve. The Panel recognises that delivering the intent set out within this statement, alongside the wider recommendations of the Inquiry, is a long-term endeavour that requires careful phasing and prioritisation. The government’s plans to achieve this are set out in the Next Steps document which accompanies this statement.

Problem Statement: the current state of affairs

The Grenfell Tower fire exposed profound, systemic failures across the building safety system, including widespread gaps in professional competence, ethical behaviours, and oversight. The Inquiry showed how unclear responsibilities, inconsistent standards, and weak assurance allowed unsafe practices to take hold and left residents unprotected. These shortcomings not only led to a catastrophic loss of life but also significant societal harm and costs.

Within that landscape, the Inquiry drew attention to certain high-risk professions, including fire engineers. The discipline lacks a coherent educational foundation and clear, consistent requirements for entry to the profession. There is no single recognised pathway, and although some programmes exist and some engineers choose to become Chartered, accredited programmes, structured education, and wider capacity-building remain limited and uneven. This leads to significant variation in the qualifications and skills of those practising as fire engineers, with insufficient emphasis on the ethical practice fundamental to ensuring life safety. These gaps, and the over-specialisation in siloed technical areas, are undermining the development of a competent workforce capable of supporting an effective regulatory system, in a complex and rapidly changing built environment.

Professional practice is similarly fragmented. Fire engineering principles and the role of a fire engineer are often poorly understood or undervalued within multidisciplinary teams, leading to the marginalisation of fire engineering input. Ethical standards and expectations of professional conduct are inconsistently defined and monitored, and the variety of education and competence means that engineering principles and guidance are sometimes not applied effectively to real life situations. As a result, confidence in the profession is poor, and capacity remains too low. This will not meet current or future needs, places vulnerable individuals and the wider public at risk, and undermines people’s rights to safe housing.

In addressing these challenges, the establishment of fire engineering as a regulated profession has to deliver clear outcomes for the safety of people and the built environment. These outcomes include:

• a system in which buildings are consistently safe for the people who live in, use and occupy them
• a resilient, competent workforce that operates ethically and is accountable for protection of life through the quality of its work
• viable, attractive education routes, leading to good, sustainable careers
• a profession that values its duty to protect people and so earns and maintains the trust of the public

Central to this vision is ensuring that fire engineering solutions consistently protect everyone, including the most vulnerable. This will depend on mechanisms such as enforceable standards for entry and practice, a nationally recognised competency framework, mandatory accreditation of education pathways, and robust regulatory oversight of professional and ethical conduct.

Definition of a fire engineer

The Panel defines a fire engineer as follows:

Fire engineers are professionals who develop and deliver engineering solutions that protect people and mitigate harm to the built and natural environment in the event of fire.

The activities that fire engineers undertake include planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising, delivering and managing buildings through the application of fire engineering principles. They should perform those activities with the goal of safeguarding societal benefit such as life, health, property, economic interests, public welfare, or the environment.^{[footnote 1]}

Future Regulation

The Panel supports the government’s intention to regulate both the title and function of fire engineers. While further detail will be shaped through consultation, these elements should underpin the development of statutory regulation:

Title

In principle, a new protected title for fire engineers will be introduced, with legal restrictions on its use. The precise form of the title will be subject to consultation before being finalised. Protecting title in addition to function will ensure that the public can trust that anyone using the title has met recognised education, ethics and competency requirements, and will prioritise life safety. It will prevent deception and misrepresentation of the role and competence of a fire engineer, supporting informed consumer choice and upholding professional integrity and trust.

Function

In principle, statutory regulation will define the functions and activities that can only be performed by an individual who is registered and has met specific requirements. Fire engineers will hold formal responsibility for the development and stewardship of the fire safety strategy, with clear duties defined in regulation. Establishing this responsibility in law will ensure that the strategy is developed by individuals who meet recognised education, ethical and competency requirements. This will prevent gaps, ambiguity or misrepresentation of responsibility, and will support consistent, high-quality fire engineering practice that the public can trust.

The core function of a fire engineer: the fire safety strategy

As noted above, at the heart of a fire engineer’s work is the fire safety strategy and the Panel agrees that this should be the fire engineer’s central, protected function. Fire engineers should have clear responsibility for preparing, delivering, and periodically reviewing the fire safety strategy across a building’s lifecycle, from design, construction, handover, occupation, ongoing use and eventual decommissioning.

With no authoritative definition of a fire safety strategy, and varied approaches to this task between existing fire engineers, the Panel’s view is that it should include:

• a description of all features of the building that may be affected by a fire or should play a role in preventing and managing a fire
• a description and technical demonstration of how the building is expected to perform over the duration of a fire, including underlying assumptions, key actions to be taken, safety measures in place and any uncertainties or complications that might arise
• an explanation of how different safety systems work together, including any interactions, dependencies or conflicts, and how effective and reliable the fire safety measures are
• a description of how people in or about the building in the event of a fire will be kept safe, including those who are vulnerable
• a plan to enable fire and rescue service intervention
• a plan for how the building will be managed and maintained to keep it fire safe over its lifetime, including details of all the parts of the strategy that need regular checks and maintenance, and an inspection schedule

In delivering the fire safety strategy, the role of the fire engineer is fundamentally one of integration. The fire engineer acts as the link between multiple disciplines, ensuring that individual design decisions made by architects, structural engineers, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) specialists and others come together to form a coherent and effective fire safety solution. While each profession retains responsibility for its own technical domain, the fire engineer is responsible for integrating those components into a whole-building approach that prevents fire where possible, limits its spread if it occurs, and supports safe evacuation and operational response.

In considering the fire safety strategy as a restricted function, the Panel also considered Recommendation 10 of the Inquiry which stipulates that registered fire engineers should be statutorily required to produce the fire safety strategy for the construction or refurbishment of higher-risk buildings. The Panel agrees that this should be the initial focus but advises that government consider extending the scope of mandatory fire engineer involvement across a wider range of buildings and critical infrastructure, focusing where there is a resultant likelihood of higher consequences including catastrophic loss of life. The panel recognises that the extension of scope requires detailed analysis and consultation to inform a phased and proportionate approach.

In addition, the Panel advises that government further considers the fire engineer’s role in occupation to enable periodic review of the fire safety strategy and ensure it remains fit for purpose as building use evolves and as maintenance works are undertaken. This includes looking at the interaction between fire engineers and other roles with duties during the occupation phase, such as fire risk assessors, to clarify respective roles, duties and competence required to uphold fire safety across different building types, uses, and occupancy profiles.

The Panel finally considered where fire engineers operate across a wider range of roles beyond the production of a fire safety strategy. Many work within regulatory functions in building control and building standards bodies, and fire and rescue services, where they assess designs, advise on compliance, support enforcement activity, and in operational response. In addition, fire engineers can play key roles in product testing, certification, the evaluation of new materials and technologies as the built environment evolves. They can be involved in desktop assessments, a matter on which the Inquiry raised concerns about current practice. Given the influence of, and risk associated with, these functions, the Panel advises that fire engineers working in regulatory, investigative, and advisory roles, whether in public bodies or the private sector, should be held to comparable standards of qualification, competence, ethics and professional oversight as those working in the design, construction and occupation phases of the whole building life cycle.

Professional, legal and contractual responsibilities

Fire engineers have a central role in ensuring adherence with all statutory fire safety duties. Depending on a project’s nature and complexity, they may act as dutyholders or support one, working closely with other disciplines.

Fire engineer responsibilities extend beyond minimum statutory compliance. They have professional duties to the public, to their clients and to the wider construction and safety system. Regulation should be grounded in a clear social contract: fire engineers are trusted to act in the public interest, prioritising the safety and wellbeing of building users. They must also meet their contractual obligations, including advising clients on their legal responsibilities. In turn, clients, contractors and other professionals working with fire engineers must understand and incorporate fire engineering advice where functions are formally reserved to the profession.

The Panel recognises that effective delivery depends on the competence, cooperation and co-ordination of other disciplines. Clearer regulation of fire engineering will help define interfaces with other disciplines, contractually and through codes of practice, so that responsibilities for inputs and outputs are properly understood. Consistently high standards across these interactions are essential to achieving safe buildings and critical infrastructure.

Attributes (skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours)

To fulfil the functions set out in section 4, a competent fire engineer needs strong technical knowledge and the ability to work across disciplines.

This includes understanding of core architectural and engineering principles:

• fire dynamics
• prevention
• human behaviour
• building structures, systems and operations
• fire-fighting needs, alongside good analytical and communication skills

They must understand the regulatory framework across the building life cycle in order to interpret and apply requirements proportionately. Fire engineers should clearly explain and demonstrate how their fire safety strategy meets these requirements and engage stakeholders, such as other design disciplines, contractors, building control/standards bodies, fire and rescue services, insurers, and building users.

The Panel considers that this broad foundation of knowledge and skills is comparable to other engineering disciplines where it is a 2-part process to acquire the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary to be formally recognised as a competent engineer.^{[footnote 2]} It is the Panel’s view that fire engineers should operate consistently on the same principles.

This means that, long-term, the development of a competent fire engineer will be a structured process that must involve (at least both of) formally accredited education and supervised professional experience. Entry into the profession should typically begin with the completion of a relevant accredited higher education programme, which provides foundational scientific and engineering knowledge alongside specific learning in fire engineering principles and practice. The Panel recognises that confidence in new entrants to the profession depends on the quality, consistency, and availability of UK education programmes.

The Panel recognises that university education should remain the main route into the profession. However, well-designed alternatives, such as accredited apprenticeships, may be appropriate where they deliver outcomes equivalent to a fire engineering degree. There must also be clear pathways for existing fire engineers to demonstrate competence and for qualified professionals from other disciplines to transition into the regulated fire engineering profession.

Following formal education, the graduate fire engineer must acquire practical experience for a defined period through supervised practice under a regulated fire engineer. This period of initial professional development is essential for embedding the behaviours and values expected of the profession. It is at this point where professional registration can be achieved, subject to review by the regulator. Subsequently, for registration to be maintained, professional conduct and development must remain a continuous process throughout an individual’s career, supported by a formal framework of competence oversight and structured continuing professional development (CPD) requirements.

Similarly, the Panel advises that the future regulator establishes basic competency requirements for other professions working with the fire engineer. Architects, civil, structural, and building services engineers, as well as fire risk assessors, must also hold an appropriate level of fire safety competence and understand the integrator function of the fire engineer in relation to their discipline, as set out in recommendation 18 of the Inquiry’s Phase 2 report. Without this shared baseline, the system cannot reliably produce or maintain fire-safe buildings.

The Panel advises that the future regulator establish a robust and enforceable code of professional conduct for fire engineers. This code should set clear expectations for honesty, accountability, respect, and professional behaviour. It must ensure that fire engineers act transparently, uphold their duties to society and clients, and maintain the highest standards of integrity, particularly in meeting the needs of all building users, including the most vulnerable. The Panel also advises that, in defining the full set of attributes required for registration, the future regulator draw on established frameworks such as the seminal work of Rasbash^{[footnote 3]} and other contemporary approaches.^{[footnote 4] [footnote 5]}

Implementing the Statement – Priorities and Next Steps

Building on the work of the Fire Engineers Advisory Panel, the next phase is for the government and the sector to progress the Inquiry’s remaining recommendations relating to fire engineers, including the development of statutory regulation for the profession. Delivering these recommendations, and achieving the outcomes described in this statement, will require a phased, carefully managed transition. Much of the detailed implementation will be subject to further consultation. Further information on this approach is provided in the accompanying Next Steps document.

This statement represents a significant step towards a future in which fire engineering is a regulated, accountable profession operating within a system that places the safety and wellbeing of all people at its core. It sets a clear direction for cultural and professional change, supporting a built environment that consistently achieves fire-safe outcomes through collaboration, competence and a shared commitment to public safety.

1. The definition published by Professional Engineers Ontario has been influential to the Panel’s position. ↩

2. Fire Safety Engineering, Education Report, Warren Centre, 2019. ↩

3. Rasbash, D.J., ‘A Modular Approach to the Subject of Fire Safety Engineering’, (1980) Fire Safety Journal, 3. ↩

4. Lange, D., Torero, J.L, Spinardi, G., Law, A., Johnson, P., Brinson, A., Maluk, C., Hidalgo, J. & Woodrow, M. (2022) ‘A competency framework for fire safety engineering’, Fire Safety Journal, 127. ↩

5. Lange, D., Torero, J.L., Osorio, A., Lobel, N., Maluk, C., Hidalgo, J., Johnson, P., Foley, M. & Brinson, A. (2021) ‘Identifying the attributes of a profession in the practice and regulation of fire safety engineering’, Fire Safety Journal, 121. ↩