Fire Risk Assessment in Sheffield: Mixed-Use Building Safety

Sheffield has a growing number of mixed-use buildings — developments where commercial premises such as shops, restaurants, offices or takeaways sit directly below or alongside residential flats. These buildings are common across the city centre and surrounding districts, and they present some of the most complex fire-safety challenges for the responsible person.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRO), the responsible person must ensure a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment is carried out and kept up to date. For mixed-use premises, that duty is often shared or overlapping, which makes getting the right assessment essential. This article explains how fire risk assessment works for Sheffield’s mixed-use buildings and what you need to consider to stay compliant.

What counts as a mixed-use building?

A mixed-use building is any premises that combines two or more different occupancy types under one roof or within a shared structure. Common examples in Sheffield include:

• A ground-floor takeaway or restaurant with flats above
• A retail unit with offices on the first floor and residential accommodation above
• A converted Victorian or Edwardian terrace with a commercial unit at street level and self-contained flats upstairs
• Purpose-built blocks with commercial communal areas and residential upper floors

In these buildings, fire risks from the commercial part can directly affect residents, and vice versa. The RRO applies to the communal areas and the commercial premises, while individual domestic flats are generally outside the Order’s scope — but the fire safety of the building as a whole still has to be considered.

Who is the responsible person?

The responsible person under the RRO is usually the employer, the building owner, the managing agent or the person with control of the premises. In a mixed-use building, there may be more than one responsible person — for example, the business operator on the ground floor and the freeholder or managing agent responsible for communal areas and residential parts.

Where multiple responsible persons exist, the RRO requires them to co-operate and co-ordinate with each other on fire-safety measures. In practice, this means sharing information from their respective fire risk assessments, agreeing on shared escape routes, and making sure one person’s actions do not put another’s occupants at risk.

Key fire risks in mixed-use buildings

Mixed-use buildings carry risks that single-use premises do not. A fire risk assessment for a Sheffield mixed-use property needs to consider:

• Separation between commercial and residential parts — are floors, walls and ceilings properly compartmented to stop fire and smoke spreading between units?
• Shared escape routes — can residents and workers evacuate safely using common staircases or corridors?
• Commercial cooking risks — restaurants, takeaways and cafés introduce extract systems, grease-laden ducting and deep-fat frying, all of which are significant fire hazards
• Storage in communal areas — commercial stock, waste bins or deliveries left in shared corridors can block escape routes or fuel a fire
• Alarm systems — does the commercial fire alarm interface with residential detection, and are occupants warned promptly?
• External wall construction and cladding — particularly relevant in older converted buildings or post-2000 developments
• Access for fire and rescue services — South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue need clear access and accurate information about the building layout

The assessment should identify hazards, evaluate who is at risk, and set out reasonable practicable measures to reduce that risk.

What does a suitable fire risk assessment involve?

Under the RRO and guidance such as PAS 79, a fire risk assessment should be systematic and documented where the premises are non-domestic or shared. For mixed-use buildings, a competent assessor will typically:

1. Inspect the commercial premises and communal areas 2. Review fire separation and compartmentation between occupancies 3. Check fire doors, escape routes, signage and emergency lighting 4. Examine detection and alarm systems and their integration 5. Assess the management of fire safety — training, maintenance, testing records 6. Produce a written report with prioritised recommendations

The assessment must be reviewed regularly and updated when there are changes to the building layout, occupancy, use or equipment. A one-off assessment is not enough to satisfy the RRO over the lifetime of a building.

Common compliance gaps in Sheffield

HawkSwift’s assessors regularly see the same issues in Sheffield’s mixed-use stock. These include:

• Inadequate fire-stopping between commercial kitchens and residential floors
• Wedged-open fire doors on communal escape routes
• No clear responsibility for shared areas between tenants, freeholders and agents
• Outdated or missing fire risk assessments, sometimes dating back years
• Poor extraction maintenance in commercial kitchens, creating hidden fire load in ducting

These gaps are not just paperwork problems — they can put lives at risk and expose the responsible person to enforcement action by the fire authority.

How HawkSwift can help

HawkSwift Ltd provides fire risk assessments for mixed-use and commercial premises across Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Our NEBOSH-qualified assessors understand the specific risks of shared buildings and produce clear, practical reports — usually delivered within 48 hours of the inspection. Assessments start from £199 + VAT.

If you own, manage or operate from a mixed-use building in Sheffield, book a fire risk assessment with HawkSwift and make sure your premises, tenants and responsibilities are properly covered.