Prices

What fire safety
actually costs in London

Tick what your building needs and get a range in about twenty seconds, built from what a two-engineer crew genuinely costs rather than from a competitor’s website. You also get the servicing intervals your building owes, which is the part most people have never been told.

Work out a price

Always a range Never a single figure
Free survey A written quote, no obligation
Ex VAT, inc shown Both, because both get paid

Fire alarm cabling and containment being installed in a commercial building

What each accreditation covers, and how to verify it

Where the money actually goes

This is the job the whole model is anchored to: a twelve-device conventional fire alarm installation in an occupied commercial building. Not a price list, a cost stack. Your own range is in the calculator below it.

A crew of two, per eight-hour day

£880

roughly £1,315 out of hours

Current UK contractor rate, Aug 2026. Trade-wide rather than trade-specific: two engineers for a day cost the same pulling alarm cable as pipe.

Twelve devices, occupied building

First fix, cabling and containment: 2.0 crew-days
Second fix, panel and terminations: 1.0 crew-day
Commissioning, cause and effect, certificate: 0.5 crew-day
Panel, devices, 400m of cable, sundries: about £1,140

Three and a half crew-days is about £3,080 of engineer time, so that job lands near £4,200 before margin. It is worth knowing because it is the floor: a quote well under it is not a bargain, it is a quote with something left out. The three things that usually go missing are commissioning, the cause-and-effect matrix and the certificate, and those three are the difference between a system that is installed and a system that is compliant.

Questions about what fire safety work costs?

You get an engineer on the phone, not a call centre. Free survey, written quote, no obligation.

020 3393 1661 or book a free survey

The four things that move a fire alarm price most

Floor area is the number people expect to matter and it is rarely the one that decides. These four move a quote further, and all four are visible on a twenty-minute walk round.

Whether the building is occupied. Working around a trading shop, a running kitchen or a care home means shorter working windows, more make-good and sometimes out-of-hours rates, which are about half as much again per crew-day.

How the cable can be routed. A modern building with accessible voids and containment is quick. A Victorian conversion with solid walls, no voids and a listed staircase is the same number of devices and twice the labour.

The category the assessment calls for. L4 covers escape routes, L3 adds the rooms opening onto them, L2 adds named high-risk areas and L1 is everywhere. That is a device count decision made by the fire risk assessment, not by us and not by you.

What is already there. Sound existing cable, a panel with spare capacity or a compatible platform can take a large amount out of a price. This is the single most common reason a survey comes in under the estimate.

What we look for on the walk round

Occupied premises: Shorter windows, more make-good, sometimes out-of-hours rates at about 1.5x the day rate.
Cable routes: Accessible voids and containment are quick. Solid walls and no voids are the same devices at twice the labour.
Category: L4, L3, L2 or L1. A device-count decision, made by the fire risk assessment.
Existing system: Sound cable or a panel with spare capacity is the usual reason a survey comes in under the estimate.

If a quote comes in a long way under the range on this page, ask what it excludes. The three that usually go missing are commissioning, the cause-and-effect matrix, and the certificate. All three are the difference between a system that is installed and a system that is compliant.

How to read anything on this page

Four things worth knowing before you take a number off a website, ours included.

Cost-anchored, not copied

Built up from a real UK two-engineer crew-day rate and the materials a job actually consumes, then checked against published trade guides to confirm it sits inside the real market band.
A range, and why it is one

A single figure produced without seeing the building is a figure somebody has to argue upwards later. Under the DMCCA 2024 that is a misleading action, and it is also just a bad way to start.
The dates matter more than the price

The calculator also lists the servicing and testing intervals your building owes, with the standard behind each. That part is fact, and most owners find they are behind on at least one.
Then a real quote, free

An accredited engineer visits, looks at the building and puts an itemised price in writing with the British Standard each line is worked to. No charge, no obligation.

Every figure is a range, and the survey confirms it in writing
Shown excluding VAT, with the inclusive total printed underneath
Built from crew-days and materials, not from a competitor’s price list
The compliance dates are fact, taken from the standards, not estimates
Nothing on this page is a quotation or an offer to contract
The survey and the written quote that follows are both free

Questions people ask about the price

Why is it a range and not a price?

Because an honest price needs somebody to look at the building. Floor area, construction, how the cable can be routed, the category the fire risk assessment calls for and the state of any existing wiring move the figure more than anything we could publish. A range built from what the work actually costs is useful; a single number produced without a survey is a number we would then have to argue upwards on the phone, which under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 is a misleading action as well as a bad way to treat somebody.

Where do these figures come from?

They are cost-anchored rather than lifted from a competitor. The base is a real, current UK rate card for a two-engineer crew, and each service is built up from the crew-days the work genuinely takes plus materials plus margin. A twelve-device conventional install in an occupied commercial building, for example, is about three and a half crew-days plus roughly eleven hundred pounds of panel, devices and cable. Then the model is checked against published UK price guides to make sure it sits inside the real market band, which it does.

Are these your actual prices?

Not yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. These are cost-anchored estimates, which is a much better basis than the market averages they replaced, but they are not a rate card signed off job by job. What the calculator gives you is a range you can budget against and hold us to at survey. If the survey comes out materially above the range, we will explain exactly which part of your building did that before anybody asks you to sign anything.

Does the estimate include VAT?

The figures are shown excluding VAT, with the VAT-inclusive total printed underneath. That split is deliberate. The usual buyer is a Responsible Person in a business who reclaims it, and the trade guides these rates were sanity-checked against all quote plus VAT, so calling them inclusive would overstate every line by twenty per cent. But a landlord with an HMO is frequently not VAT registered and pays the inclusive figure, so hiding it would be a misleading omission of an unavoidable charge.

The calculator also told me some dates. What are those?

Those are the servicing and testing intervals your building owes for whatever you ticked, with the standard each one comes from. Most people know about the annual alarm service and have never heard of the five-yearly photometric verification that BS 5266-1 introduced for emergency lighting in October 2025. That part is fact rather than estimate, and finding out you are behind on it is usually more useful than the price.

Can I get a fixed quote instead?

Yes, and it is free. An accredited engineer visits, looks at the building, and follows up in writing with an itemised price and the British Standard each line is worked to. There is no charge for the visit or the quote, and no obligation attached to either.

Where this comes from

We name the standard rather than quoting it. British Standards are copyright of BSI and have to be bought from them; the links above are to the publisher so you can check any figure on this page against the source.

Free survey · No obligation

Turn the estimate into a real price

The survey is what converts a range into a figure you can budget against and hold us to. It is free, it takes about half an hour, and it commits you to nothing.

BAFE SP203-1 registered for fire alarms, Fike and C-TEC certified
Written quote before any work starts
Called back within 24 to 48 hours

Book a free survey Prefer to talk?020 3393 1661

What fire safetyactually costs in London