Risk improvement and survey close out, UK wide
Insurance Risk Survey Support
An insurer's surveyor spends half a day on your site and leaves a list. Twelve months later the same list appears in the renewal terms, attached to a premium or to a condition you must meet before a claim will pay. AL23 Safety prepares clients for those surveys and closes out what comes back from them, UK wide.
What is an insurance risk survey?
An underwriter's eyes on your site, written up as a list of things to do
A risk survey is a visit by a risk control surveyor acting for your insurer or broker. It happens before a policy is written, at renewal, after a large claim or when a schedule changes materially. The surveyor is not there to help you comply with the law. They are there to describe the risk being underwritten and recommend what would reduce it.
The output is a report you rarely see in full, plus a set of risk improvement requirements with dates against them. Those requirements matter commercially, since they follow you into the renewal conversation whether or not anything has been done.
Be clear about what we are and are not
AL23 Safety is a health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering consultancy. We are not an insurer and not a broker. We cannot bind cover, negotiate terms, guarantee a premium outcome or advise on the wording of an insurance contract. Those are matters for your broker. Our part is technical. We get the site and the paperwork into a defensible state, turn the surveyor's list into work that can be done and evidence the close out.
Legal duty and insurer requirement are not the same thing
A legal duty is enforceable by a regulator. Breach can bring an improvement notice, a prohibition notice or prosecution. An insurer requirement is contractual. Nobody prosecutes you for it. The consequence lands on cover, premium or whether a claim pays.
The two overlap without matching. A building can satisfy the Building Regulations and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 in full and still be told by an insurer to install sprinklers, upgrade a compartment wall or stop storing pallets against a boundary. The insurer is protecting the building itself, where the law protects the people in it. Knowing which of the two an item comes from tells you how negotiable it is.
Who needs one
Anyone whose renewal now carries a list
- A survey is booked and nobody has looked at the site through an underwriter's eyes
- Risk improvement requirements have arrived with completion dates and no explanation of what good evidence looks like
- A requirement has been marked as a condition precedent, which changes the consequence of missing it
- You have suffered a fire, escape of water or a significant liability claim and a post-loss survey is coming
- You have acquired a site, changed process, added racking or introduced battery charging while the schedule no longer describes the risk
- Your construction project has triggered insurer conditions on hot work, security or temporary buildings
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
Insurance requirements sit on top of the law rather than in place of it. Employers' liability cover is compulsory under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, at a minimum of £5 million. Public liability cover is not compulsory. Property and fire requirements draw on insurer guidance rather than statute.
Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969
Compulsory cover of at least £5 million for employees. An employers liability survey examines the same ground a health and safety inspector would, from risk assessment through to supervision.
HSWA 1974 and MHSWR 1999
The statutory baseline a liability surveyor tests against. Weak documentation here reads to an underwriter as an uncontrolled claims exposure.
Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
The life safety duty. A property insurer starts here and asks for more, since the Order does not require you to protect the building or the stock in it.
Insurer fire guidance
Loss Prevention Council material and the RC series of recommendation documents produced by RISCAuthority for the Fire Protection Association. This is guidance rather than law. It binds you only through your policy or your contract.
The Joint Code of Practice on the protection from fire of construction sites
Tenth edition 2022, with Amendment 1 in January 2023 and Amendment 2 in May 2025, consolidated in July 2025. It applies at an original contract value of £2.5 million and above, plus smaller contracts within a project valued at £20 million or above. It has no statutory force. Non-compliance can result in insurance being withdrawn, which then puts a contractor in breach of a construction contract requiring that cover.
What the service covers
From pre-survey readiness to evidenced close out
- A pre-survey readiness review run as the surveyor would run it, covering housekeeping, storage, ignition sources, security and the document set
- Employers liability preparation, covering risk assessments, machinery guarding, manual handling, noise, vibration, work at height and contractor control
- Public liability preparation, covering the public interface, slips and trips, external areas, escape of water and third party works
- Property and fire preparation, covering compartmentation, fire stopping, detection coverage, suppression, combustible storage, hot work control and arson risk
- Attendance at the survey where you want a technical voice in the room
- Translation of the surveyor's requirements into a scoped, sequenced and costed plan of work
- Separation of the list into legal duties, insurer requirements and conditions precedent, since the consequence of missing each differs
- Technical challenge where a requirement is disproportionate or misdiagnosed, presented to your broker with reasoning and an alternative
- Fire risk assessment where the survey has questioned the quality of yours. Ours are BAFE SP205 third-party certified fire risk assessments, independently certificated by SSAIB
- An evidence pack for close out, with photographs, certificates and test records referenced to each requirement, then a verification revisit before renewal
- Integration into your wider monitoring through our health and safety audits work
Our process
Read the list, walk the site, then evidence it
- 01
Read the paperwork
The survey report, requirement schedule, policy schedule and correspondence. We look first for anything drafted as a condition precedent.
- 02
Walk the site
We verify each requirement against what is physically there. Surveyors work fast and occasionally describe a building that has since changed.
- 03
Sort and sequence
Every item is classified by driver, cost, lead time and consequence of delay. Cheap items with hard dates go first.
- 04
Deliver or specify
We carry out the work that is ours, such as assessments and procedures. We write a clear specification for anything belonging to a contractor.
- 05
Evidence and report
We compile the close out pack and a one page position statement your broker can put to the underwriter before renewal.
What you get
A classified register and a close out pack
- A pre-survey gap report listing what would be written up, with the quick wins identified separately
- A requirement register classified by legal duty, insurer requirement and condition precedent, with owner, date and cost driver
- A close out evidence pack indexed requirement by requirement
- A technical response note for any requirement being challenged, written so a broker can forward it unedited
- A renewal position statement summarising what is complete, what is in progress and what is disputed
What we need from you
The full report, the wording and site access
- The full survey report and requirement schedule, not the summary email
- The policy schedule or at least the wording of any term described as a condition precedent
- Your broker's contact details, letting technical answers reach the underwriter rather than sit in a drawer
- Access to the building, including plant rooms, roof spaces and the external storage surveys always reach
Why AL23 Safety
Fire competence in-house, close out not commentary
Accountable
Where a requirement is reasonable we say so, even when you hoped we would argue it away. Where it is not, we set out why in terms an underwriter will engage with.
Fire competence in-house
Compartmentation, detection, suppression and fire strategy are assessed by our own fire team, not referred out.
Close out, not commentary
The point is a completed list before renewal, evidenced well enough that nobody has to take your word for it.
UK wide
We support survey preparation and close out for single sites and national portfolios across the UK from our Manchester base.
Survey booked or list received
Send us the requirement schedule and we will tell you what it really means
We will pick out anything drafted as a condition precedent, flag what is achievable before renewal and say what is worth challenging.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usIt is a term written so that meeting it is a precondition of the insurer's liability rather than a recommendation. A risk improvement requirement asks you to do something by a date. A condition precedent ties the availability of cover to it. How a specific term operates depends on its exact drafting, which is a question for your broker rather than for us.
Cover, premium and terms are all in play. The more common outcomes are an increased excess, a restriction on a peril, a higher premium or a refusal to renew. On construction projects the mechanism is explicit. The Joint Code of Practice notes that non-compliance can result in insurance ceasing to be available, putting a contractor in breach of a contract requiring that cover.
The two protect different things. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 exists to get people out of a building alive. Your property insurer is protecting the building, the stock and the business interruption that follows a loss. Sprinklers, higher grade compartmentation and stricter storage rules commonly sit above the statutory minimum. Our fire risk assessment services cover the statutory side. This service handles the gap between the two.
We will speak to your broker with your authority and answer technical questions in writing. We do not negotiate terms, discuss premium or advise on the contract of insurance. Those belong to your broker. Keeping the line clear helps you, since a technical answer carries more weight when it is not attached to a commercial ask.
Yes. The requirements arrive earlier there. Hot work permits, temporary building separation, site security and detection are insurer driven as well as legally relevant. Our construction site fire safety page covers that regime in detail.
Cost follows the number of sites, the length of the requirement schedule and how much of the work is ours rather than a contractor's. A pre-survey readiness review on a single site is usually one day plus reporting. Close out runs to the schedule dates and the lead times on physical works, which are frequently the constraint. Our published pay as you go rates are £95 per hour or £695 per day plus VAT, with portfolios better handled inside a retainer. We cannot influence what your insurer charges and will not pretend otherwise.
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