On 2 September 2026 the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published its fire prevention and protection statistics for England, year ending March 2026. Most of the trade coverage will lead on the audit total. The number that should worry building owners is further down the table.
Fire and rescue services issued 1,224 prohibition notices last year, up 27% on the year before and up 55% on six years ago. Prosecutions, meanwhile, fell again: 33 in the whole of England, down 37% on six years ago.
That is a change in how enforcement works, not just how much of it there is.
The whole funnel, in order
The figures are worth reading top to bottom, because each line is a smaller and more serious subset of the one above it.
- 50,195 fire safety audits completed
- 20,286 of them with an unsatisfactory outcome (40%)
- 18,039 informal notifications, down 6.2% on the year
- 3,355 formal notifications, up 11% on the year and 46% on six years ago
- of which 1,896 enforcement notices (up 6.9%), 1,224 prohibition notices (up 27%) and 202 alterations notices (down 20%)
- 33 prosecutions
Two things stand out. Informal action fell while formal action rose, so the authorities are writing fewer letters and serving more notices. And within the formal notices, the growth is almost entirely in the one instrument that stops you using the building.
Why prohibition, and why now
A prohibition notice under article 31 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 prohibits or restricts use of premises, or part of them, until the specified matters are put right. Where the authority states that the risk of serious injury is imminent, it takes effect the moment it is served.
From an enforcing officer’s point of view it is the most efficient tool on the shelf. There is no court date, no prosecution file, no waiting for a magistrate. The risk stops today. Set that against a prosecution, which takes months, costs the service money, and ends in a fine the courts have been handing down in the low thousands, and the shift in the table makes sense.
The other figure in the release explains what triggers it. The most breached provision, for another year, was article 14: emergency routes and exits. 11,286 breaches were recorded, up 9.3% on the year. A locked final exit, a corridor used as storage, a stair door wedged open, a fire door removed for a refurbishment that never finished. These are the findings that an officer can reasonably describe as imminent, and they are the findings that most often turn a visit into a prohibition.
The appeal rule that makes this matter
All three formal notices can be appealed to the magistrates’ court within 21 days of service (article 35). The difference is what happens while you appeal.
Appealing an enforcement notice or an alterations notice suspends it until the appeal is decided. Appealing a prohibition notice does not. The prohibition stays in force unless you apply to the court and the court specifically directs otherwise.
So the instrument that is growing fastest is also the one you cannot stall by lodging an appeal. The only reliable way out of a prohibition notice is to fix the specified matters and show the authority the evidence.
The far end of that road was on display on 24 August 2026 at St Albans Crown Court, where a Bishop’s Stortford restaurateur received a 14 month sentence, suspended for two years, after continuing to let an upper floor as sleeping accommodation in breach of a prohibition notice (Fire Safety Matters). That is what one of the 33 prosecutions looks like. It started as one of the 1,224.
What to do with this
- Walk your escape routes this week, from the furthest point to the street. Article 14 is the most breached provision because the defects are visible, cheap to create and cheap to fix. Storage, wedged doors, locked exits, missing signage. A caretaker can find them; an inspecting officer certainly will.
- Know which building type is in the frame. Sleeping accommodation over a commercial unit is the configuration that keeps producing prohibitions and prosecutions. We set out what to check in that building type after three Sussex cases.
- If a notice lands, diarise 21 days from the date of service and read exactly what it specifies. That list is your scope of works and the checklist you will be measured against.
- On a prohibition notice, comply first and argue second. Appealing does not lift it. Trading on through it is what converts a compliance problem into a criminal one.
- Have the paperwork that closes a notice. Dated records of what was done, by whom, and how it was verified. Our note on what the enforcement guidance now expects on paper covers why the file decides these disputes.
How Gemini AMPM can help
Most notices we are asked to help close name the same handful of things: escape routes that no longer work as designed, detection that does not meet the standard, fire doors that do not perform, and no record proving any of it was maintained.
We carry out fire risk assessments that identify the article 14 findings before an officer does, clear them through our remedial works team, reinstate fire doors on escape routes, and maintain detection to BS 5839-1:2025 under service and maintenance contracts that produce the certificates a notice response needs.
If a fire and rescue service has written to you about one of your buildings, the clock started on the date of service. Get in touch and we will help you answer it with evidence.
