A fire stopping certificate is only as good as the record underneath it. Every week a main contractor somewhere receives a one-page certificate that says "all fire stopping installed to manufacturer's details" with a signature, and every week a building safety manager, a fire engineer or an insurer sends it back. This page sets out what the certificate and the record behind it have to contain to be worth the paper, why, and where they usually fall down.
First, what the law actually asks for
There is no statutory "fire stopping certificate" in England. Two duties sit behind the demand for one.
Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations requires fire safety information about the building to be handed to the responsible person at completion, so the building can be operated and maintained safely. The passive fire protection installed in the compartment walls and floors is part of that information.
The Building Safety Act 2022 adds the golden thread for higher-risk buildings, broadly those of at least 18 metres or seven storeys with two or more residential units: an accurate, digital, whole-life record of what was built. A fire stopping contractor's evidence flows into it. Below that threshold the strict duty does not bite, but main contractors, insurers and clients now ask for the same standard of evidence on jobs of every size, because it protects them too.
So the certificate is not the thing the law wants. The law wants the information. The certificate is the contractor's signed statement that the information is true and complete.
The record every seal needs
A certificate summarises a record. The record is kept seal by seal, as the work goes in, and each entry should let a competent stranger verify the installation without the installer standing next to them. At minimum:
- Location. Block, level, room or riser, and the exact point pinned on the current revision of the drawing. "Level 2 riser" is not a location; a pin on the plan is.
- The element. Wall or floor, its construction (blockwork, drylining, concrete, timber stud) and thickness, and the fire resistance it must achieve, for example EI 60 or EI 120.
- The services. What passes through: cables and how many, pipes and their material, diameter and any insulation, conduit, trunking, ducts, trays. Sizes matter because every tested detail has limits.
- The opening. Width and height of the aperture, because the tested detail has a maximum.
- The product and the tested system. Manufacturer, product references, and the detail reference the installation follows, with its test or classification report and field of application. "Fire batt and mastic" is a description; "double batt with intumescent sealant to detail reference X, classification report Y" is evidence.
- Any departure from the tested detail, stated plainly, with the manufacturer's written confirmation or an engineering judgement attached. A departure hidden in a photo is a defect waiting to be found.
- Who installed it and when. The person's name and their competence, and the date. On a single-side install, which side.
- Photographs. Before, during and after, tied to that seal, with the date and the location on the image. This is the line that separates a schedule from proof.
- Status and follow-up. Installed, inspected, remedial required, complete, and who inspected it.
- A history that cannot be quietly rewritten. If a record changes after the event, the change, the person and the time should be visible.
What the certificate itself should say
With that record in place, the certificate is short and specific:
- Project, client, main contractor, and the contractor issuing the certificate with company number and address.
- The scope covered, by block, level and drawing reference, and the date range of the works.
- A statement that the works listed in the attached record were installed in accordance with the tested details referenced against each seal, naming the manufacturer systems used.
- A list, or a link to the record, of every seal covered, with its reference, location, detail reference and status. A count is not enough.
- Any seals excluded, incomplete or held as defects, and why. A certificate that pretends the job is finished when six seals are waiting on another trade is worse than one that says so.
- The name and signature of the person taking responsibility, and the date.
- If the contractor belongs to a third-party certification scheme, the scheme, membership number and scope, stated exactly as the scheme allows and not a word more.
The certificates that get sent back
- The one-liner. "All fire stopping complete to manufacturer's instructions." No list, no locations, no details. It certifies nothing.
- The schedule with no photographs. Two hundred rows, no images. Once the ceiling is up, nobody can check a single one.
- Photographs with no location. A folder of images that could be any seal in any building.
- Product names instead of tested details. "Fire batt" tells the reader nothing about whether the batt was tested for that wall, those services and that opening.
- Departures nobody wrote down. The copper pipe that needed a different detail, the tray that touches the batt, the single-side install where the detail wanted both. Found later, every one of them becomes a dispute.
- Retrospective packs. Assembled from memory at the end of the job. They look complete and prove nothing.
- Overstated credentials. Certification wording that goes beyond what the scheme has actually awarded. Schemes take that seriously, and so do clients.
How to keep the record so the certificate writes itself
Capture the record at the point of work, on the drawing, as the seal goes in: drop the pin, record the element, services and opening, pick the tested detail, take the before, during and after photographs, name the installer. Do that for every seal and the close-out pack is a report, not a reconstruction.
Two things decide whether that happens. It has to work with no signal, because risers and basements have none, so the record must be captured on the device and sent later. And drawing revisions have to be handled, so a superseded plan does not orphan a hundred pins.
That is what Assaya does. It is passive fire protection software built by fire-stopping installers at Rockfirepro Ltd: an offline-first field app that pins every seal to the drawing with its tested detail reference and photographs, an office console, and a close-out pack that lists every seal with its evidence and its history. UK-hosted, each firm on its own isolated database, Cyber Essentials certified, and every change to a record kept on a tamper-evident chain. The certificate at the end is the same record, signed.
Whatever tool you use, the test never changes. Could a competent stranger, standing in the building in ten years' time with your certificate in hand, find each seal and see what was installed, to which tested detail, by whom, and what it looked like on the day. If yes, it is a certificate. If not, it is a signature.
Questions people ask
Is a fire stopping certificate a legal document?
There is no single statutory certificate for fire stopping in England. What the law requires is fire safety information handed over at completion under Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations, and for higher-risk buildings the golden thread under the Building Safety Act 2022. A certificate is the contractor's evidence that the installed work matches a tested system. Its value is entirely in what it can prove.
Who can issue a fire stopping certificate?
The installing contractor issues it as a statement of what was installed, by whom and to which tested detail. Some clients ask for the installer to belong to a third-party certification scheme, which adds independent surveillance of the contractor's work. The certificate itself is still the contractor's document; the scheme membership is a separate fact that should be stated accurately and never overstated.
Does a certificate need photographs?
Nothing in law says so, but a certificate without before, during and after photographs of each seal cannot be checked once the wall is closed. Main contractors, building safety managers and insurers increasingly refuse close-out packs that carry a schedule but no images. Photographs pinned to the seal's location on the drawing are what turn a list into evidence.
What is the difference between a certificate and a completion record?
A completion record is the seal-by-seal log kept as the work goes in. The certificate is the summary the contractor signs at the end, saying that the work in that record was installed to the tested details listed. One is the evidence, the other is the statement. A certificate that does not sit on a complete record is a signature with nothing behind it.
How long should fire stopping records be kept?
For the life of the building. Regulation 38 information is handed to the responsible person for ongoing management, and the Building Safety Act's golden thread is explicitly a whole-life record. In practice keep the contractor's own copy indefinitely as well: it is the only defence if an installation is questioned years later.