How can a letting agent log weekly fire alarm tests in an HMO or supported living property?

The LACORS fire safety guidance is the usual benchmark councils use for HMOs. For a grade A alarm system, with a control panel, a call point or detector is tested weekly and the system is serviced every six months. Grade D or E mains wired alarms are tested monthly with the test button, and tenants can be given clear instructions to do it. Extinguishers are serviced yearly, and emergency lighting gets an annual discharge test.

The Management of HMOs (England) Regulations 2006 require the manager to keep means of escape free from obstruction and fire alarms in good working order. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 covers the common parts of an HMO let room by room, and the responsible person must carry out a fire risk assessment and review it regularly. That assessment decides what applies to each building.

Whoever is on site, as long as the log shows who it was. In an HMO that might be someone from the agency, the landlord, or a tenant nominated and shown how. In supported living it is often a care worker, support worker or warden who is there every day.

Each person should see only the properties they are responsible for, and only while they are. A tenant nominated to do the test should lose access when they move out.

A paper log book records each test, but nobody is told when a week is missed, and it cannot raise a repair. A digital log should:

• open from a link or a QR code at the property, so the check is logged on a phone where it happens
• record who did it, when, pass or fail, a note and an optional photo
• hold every routine check at its own frequency: the alarm test, escape routes and fire doors, extinguishers, emergency lighting, and checks such as communal cleaning, water flushing or a welfare walk round
• show a week with no check as not done, and flag a check that is overdue
• turn a failed fire safety check into an urgent repair and tell the office at once
• export the history as a PDF for a council inspection

Our live lettings demo at lettings-demo.varsuite.co.uk includes a supported living house in Accrington where a support worker logs the weekly fire alarm test from her phone, with one missed week and one failed test that raised a repair. Overdue checks show on the property, on the dashboard and in the Site checks column of the compliance board, and the history exports as a PDF.

For the licence, rooms and conditions around the checks, read what software HMO landlords and agents need for licensing, and see the rest of the features on our letting agent software page. This is not fire safety or legal advice: follow your fire risk assessment.