Fire Prevention in Your Home: What You Need to Know

At JB Kind, fire safety is a constant priority. This is why many of our door designs are available as FD30 fire doors, which provide vital protection in the event of a blaze. But fire door safety is on only one part of a well-rounded approach to keeping your home safe. With this in mind, we’ve gathered a selection of reliable resources on fire prevention to help you explore the tools, guidance, and everyday habits that support a safer home.

Government advice on fire prevention

The Government offers clear, practical guidance on how to make your home safe from fire. It’s a useful starting point for anyone looking to improve their safety measures. The advice covers the essentials, such as choosing and maintaining the right smoke alarms, understanding where fire hazards are most likely to occur, and adopting simple habits that lower the chance of a fire starting.

It also explains how to create an effective escape plan, including what to do if smoke blocks your route, how to help children or vulnerable family members, and why a night-time routine can make a significant difference. Taken together, this guidance provides a solid foundation for keeping your home and the people in it as safe as possible.

Take a home fire safety check

The London Fire Brigade provides clear, practical guidance on an often overlooked area of fire safety: heat alarms. They also offer a free online Home Safety Checker, which allows you to assess potential fire risks in every room of your home in just a few minutes. Once completed, you’ll receive a personalised escape plan based on your answers. This tool is available to anyone in the UK, and if you prefer face-to-face advice, your local fire service might offer home visits for additional support.

The National Fire Chiefs Council also has a comprehensive Home Fire Safety Check Tool, along with a wide range of useful tips on preventing fires and planning for emergencies. Both resources are valuable for understanding your home’s risk levels and identifying simple steps to improve safety.

Fire door safety checks

We’ve already highlighted how fire doors are an important part of any home fire safety plan, butit’s worth taking a moment to focus on how to keep them performing as they should. Even the highest-quality fire door needs regular care, and carrying out simple fire door safety checks helps ensure it will offer the protection it’s designed for.

These checks include looking at whether the door closes fully into the frame without sticking, confirming that seals are intact and undamaged, and making sure hinges are secure with no missing screws. It’s also important to check that nothing has been fitted to the door that could compromise its performance, such as unsuitable locks or additional fittings.

You can read more in our guide to fire door safety and maintenance.

Find out more about fire prevention and fire door safety

If you’ve been researching fire prevention, you’ll already know how much information is available, and it’s not always easy to tell which sources are trustworthy or genuinely helpful. To make things simpler, we’ve gathered a selection of reputable organisations that offer clear, practical guidance on reducing fire risks in the home.

• The Government’s Fire Safety in the Home guidance: This comprehensive information source brings together all the Government’s information and documents relating to fire safety. It includes advice for fire safety in the home as well as for parents, students, disabled people and travellers. It also has a specialist seasonal fire safety section which highlights key dangers at some of the UK’s most celebrated times of the year. You can also check out the Government’s Fire Kills Campaign for fire safety information, as well as videos.
• Fire Safety Advice Centre: The Fire Safety Advice Centre provides free fire safety and fire prevention advice in the United Kingdom. Its resource library offers fire safety information for homes and businesses. It’s also linked to a Fire Safety Forum where you can raise your questions.
• UK Fire Service: A useful website that has plenty of informative leaflets to download, and also outlines what you can expect from a Safe and Well visit (a visit to assess fire safety in your home).
• London Fire Brigade: This site offers a wealth of support, including the online fire safety check mentioned above, as well as the opportunity to have a fire safety visit to your home. But if you’re not in London, don’t worry; there are Fire Brigades across the UK that offer support, online and in person, and many of these brigades have similar websites and tools too.
• British Woodworking Federation (BWF) Fire Door Safety Week: Packed with lots of useful advice and information, Fire Door Safety Week is an initiative that aims to raise awareness of the vital role that fire doors play in fire safety. A BWF idea, it’s also supported by a range of specialist partners, like the Home Office’s National Fire Safety Campaign, the National Fire Chief’s Council and the London Fire Brigade.
• JB Kind: At JB Kind, we have a whole section on our website dedicated to fire doors, and we’ve been writing blogs on the topic since 2014! So, if you’re in doubt, we are fire door safety specialists, and we’d be happy to answer any of your questions on the topic.