Private equity-backed buyers took 70% of UK fire and security acquisitions in 2025, up from 57% the year before, according to Grant Thornton's UK fire and security sector M&A review 2025. If you own one of these businesses, you are being bought into a consolidation that is already well advanced, and what you do in the next twelve months decides whether you sell at the top or the bottom of the range.
In short
Fire and security is the most heavily contested subsector in UK facilities services, because the revenue is contractual, the demand is created by statute rather than by discretionary budgets, and the market is still made up of more than 3,000 mostly small, owner-managed businesses (DC Advisory and Fairgrove count over 3,000 UK firms that belong to the leading trade associations). That combination is what buy-and-build investors look for, and it is why a business with £500k of EBITDA and a genuine maintenance base attracts more competition than its size would suggest.
It is also why the gap between a well-prepared sale and an unprepared one is unusually wide in this sector. The things buyers pay a premium for (recurring maintenance revenue, third-party accreditation, a management team that runs the business without the owner) take twelve to twenty-four months to build and cannot be assembled during a process.
Who is buying, and why they are in a hurry
The comparison that matters is with the wider market. Grant Thornton's 2025 review shows that across facilities services as a whole, private equity-backed buyers accounted for 46.2% of transactions in 2025. In fire and security the figure was 70%. That is not a general appetite for outsourced services; it is a targeted pursuit of this specific revenue model. Fire and security was the largest subsector in UK facilities services M&A, at 23% of deals, and DC Advisory and Fairgrove expect the sector to grow 6-7% a year to 2030.
The platforms below are the ones currently acquiring in the UK. Each has completed multiple transactions in the sub-£5m EBITDA range, and most will look at businesses well below £1m of EBITDA.
| Platform | Backer | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| Ranger Fire and Security | Inflexion (majority since June 2026); Hyperion Equity Partners reinvested | More than 25 acquisitions since launching in February 2024; £150m debt facility from Apera Asset Management in January 2026 |
| Churches Fire & Security | Horizon Capital | 20+ add-on acquisitions since 2017; grown from around £40m to £100m+ revenue |
| Compliance Group (Complii) | Ansor | 20 acquisitions since 2020 across fire, electrical and water compliance |
| Obsequio Group | Warren Equity Partners, which acquired the business from Beech Tree in October 2025 | Grown from £17m to over £70m revenue with 630+ staff; recent bolt-ons include Atlas World and PLP Fire Protection |
| ABCA Systems | Trimountain Partners | Continuation vehicle closed August 2025 alongside a new scalable debt facility |
| New Path Fire & Security | Duke Capital | 13 transactions worth £47m since 2019; explicitly targets sub-£1m EBITDA owner-managed businesses |
| Checkmate Fire | IK Partners, which acquired the business from YFM in March 2024 | Passive fire protection specialist |
Two things follow from that list. The first is that you will usually have more than one credible buyer, which is the single biggest determinant of price. The second is that these are professional, repeat acquirers with standardised diligence. They have seen a hundred businesses like yours and they know exactly which questions expose a weak maintenance base.
Why the revenue is worth more here than elsewhere
Buyers pay for fire and security maintenance revenue because the customer cannot lawfully stop buying it. The obligations sit in statute and in the standards by which compliance is judged, not in a budget line that can be deferred when trading is difficult.
The specific drivers, and it is worth being precise about which instrument does what:
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require monthly checks of fire detection and alarm systems in high-rise residential buildings, with faults not fixed within 24 hours reported to the fire and rescue authority. These duties sit in the regulations, not in the Fire Safety Act 2021, which is frequently miscited.
The same regulations require quarterly checks of communal fire doors and annual checks of flat entrance doors in buildings over 11m.
BS 5839-1 sets the servicing cycle by which fire alarm compliance is assessed: weekly user test, monthly visual checks, a six-monthly full inspection by a competent contractor. Not statute, but it is the standard an inspector will judge against, and the log book is the evidence.
Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 removed the "significant findings" threshold from 1 October 2023, so all fire risk assessment findings must now be recorded in full, across all regulated premises.
Enforcement supports the point. MHCLG's fire prevention and protection statistics show that in the year to March 2025 fire and rescue authorities in England carried out 51,020 fire safety audits and issued 2,972 formal notices, up 29% over five years. Only 58% of audits were satisfactory, the lowest proportion since 2011.
What this means for your numbers. An acquirer is not buying your revenue, it is buying the probability that your revenue repeats. Contracted maintenance with documented renewal history is worth a multiple of what the same revenue is worth if it sits in reactive callouts and project work, even where this year's EBITDA is identical.
What actually moves the multiple
In rough order of impact on what a buyer will pay:
1. The share of revenue that is contracted maintenance
This is the first number a buyer asks for and the one that sets the range. Above 60% contracted maintenance, with evidence of renewal rates rather than an assertion about them, you are in a different conversation. Reactive and project revenue is not worthless, but it is valued at a discount because it has to be won again every year.
2. Third-party accreditation
BAFE scheme registration, NSI Gold and FIRAS all matter, and it is worth being accurate about why. None of them is a legal requirement. The Home Office recommends third-party certification, and BAFE publishes an explicit note that registration is not required by law. What they are is a commercial pre-qualifier: they are commonly used as pre-qualification criteria in tenders, and they cannot be obtained quickly. NSI Gold requires ISO 9001 certification alongside NSI's own quality schedule. BAFE SP203-1 requires evidence of a Level 3 regulated qualification for lead individuals. All carry recurring surveillance audits.
For an acquirer, that difficulty is the point. Buying an accredited business is often faster than certifying an unaccredited one, and where accreditation is a tender pre-qualifier, an unaccredited buyer inherits contracts it may not be able to re-win.
3. Management depth below the owner
If the business cannot run without you, the buyer is either pricing in a key-person discount or requiring an earn-out that keeps you in place for years. This is the most common reason a sale delivers less cash on completion than the headline multiple implies.
4. Self-delivery and direct customer relationships
Work delivered by your own engineers, under your own contracts, is worth more than work subcontracted in or won through an intermediary. It protects margin and it survives a change of ownership.
Where multiples actually sit
Published figures for this sector vary widely, and the variation is not noise: it is deal size. Understanding that is worth more than any single number.
| Benchmark | EV/EBITDA | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| UK fire & security transactions, Oct 2024–Sep 2026 (9 deals) | 6.1x median (range 2.3–11.7x) | Mark to Market deal data, Bayside analysis, September 2026 |
| Of which enterprise value under £15m (7 deals) | 5.9x median (range 2.3–10.5x) | Mark to Market deal data, Bayside analysis, September 2026 |
| Fire & security precedent transactions | 8.1x (7.2x adjusted) | Bayside sector benchmarking, 2023 |
| Quoted fire & security comparables | 8.6x (7.8x adjusted) | Bayside sector benchmarking, 2023 |
| Sector median, all deal sizes | c.9x | Wilson Partners fire & security commentary, 2024 |
| Listed comparables | c.7.4x | Wilson Partners, 2024 |
| Reported range, sub-£15m enterprise value | 4–8x | James Dixey, June 2026 |
The headline sector medians are pulled up by larger transactions. A business with under £1m of EBITDA does not achieve the median, and any adviser who implies otherwise is selling you something. The honest position is that the range for smaller businesses is wide, and where you land inside it is determined by the four factors above rather than by the sector you happen to be in.
What a buyer will push back on
The regulatory case for this sector is strong but it is not uncomplicated, and a sophisticated acquirer will raise the following. You are better off having an answer than being surprised.
The Building Safety Regulator has been a bottleneck. The House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee described the delays as "unacceptable" in December 2025. Gateway processing was still running at a median of 22 to 35 weeks against statutory targets of 8 to 12 weeks in the Building Safety Regulator's own data for April to June 2026. Obligations that are certain in law can still be slow to convert into invoiced work.
Cladding remediation is moving slowly. MHCLG's monthly remediation data shows that, of 4,378 identified buildings over 11m with unsafe cladding, only 35% were complete as at April 2026 and 45% had not started. Statutory remediation deadlines have been dropped.
Prosecutions are falling, not rising. Article 32 prosecutions were down 21% year on year in MHCLG's figures for the year to March 2025, even as formal notices increased. The enforcement picture is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
The competence duty that would most benefit accredited firms is not yet law. Article 9A of the Fire Safety Order remains uncommenced, and BAFE's own qualification mandate for fire risk assessors, under its SP205 scheme, does not take effect until March 2028.
Consolidation is already well advanced. With PE-backed buyers at 70% of deals in Grant Thornton's 2025 data, the best-quality independent businesses are being acquired now. Scarcity pricing is not permanent.
None of these undermines the case for selling well-prepared into a competitive market. They do argue against waiting indefinitely on the assumption that conditions will keep improving.
What to do if you are twelve to twenty-four months out
The work that changes your valuation happens before a process starts, not during it.
Measure and evidence your recurring revenue properly. Separate contracted maintenance from reactive and project work in your management accounts, and be able to show renewal rates by contract. (Financial Readiness)
Close accreditation gaps now. Certification takes months and involves surveillance audits. Starting it during a sale process is too late to count.
Build the layer beneath you. Identify what only you currently do, and recruit or promote against it. (Management Team Strengthening)
Understand which buyers you fit. The platforms above are not interchangeable: they have different geographic gaps, service gaps and integration models. (Exit Preparation)
Fix the value constraints while you still have time. (Strategic Value Creation)
What we are seeing in our own mandates
We are currently advising two owner-managed businesses in access installation and maintenance, a sector that sits alongside fire and security and attracts many of the same buyers. In both processes, buyers have focused heavily on recurring revenue. It has been a critical part of their due diligence, and the valuation multiple on offer has hinged on it: how much of the revenue is contracted, and how well that is evidenced.
We are also supporting a client in building out the management team beneath its shareholders to make an exit possible. The feedback from buyers was that the business was too reliant on its shareholders, and that directly reduced how much buyers were prepared to pay up front, with more of the value pushed into an earn-out. It is the key-person discount described above, and the reason we start this work before a process rather than during one.
You can see a summary of our current and recent work on our track record page.
Frequently asked questions
What multiple will my fire and security business sell for?
Published sector medians sit at around 9x EV/EBITDA across all deal sizes (Wilson Partners, 2024), but reported ranges for transactions under £15m enterprise value run from 4x to 8x (James Dixey, June 2026). Smaller owner-managed businesses sit in the lower part of that range unless they have a high share of contracted maintenance revenue, third-party accreditation and management depth below the owner.
Why are private equity buyers so active in UK fire and security?
Because the revenue is contractual and the demand is created by statute rather than discretionary budgets. Fire safety inspection and maintenance obligations are non-discretionary, which makes the earnings unusually resilient. Private equity-backed buyers accounted for 70% of UK fire and security acquisitions in 2025, against 46.2% across facilities services as a whole, according to Grant Thornton's 2025 sector M&A review.
Does BAFE or NSI Gold accreditation increase the value of my business?
Yes, though not because it is legally required: it is not. Accreditation functions as a commercial pre-qualifier in tenders, takes months to obtain, requires ISO 9001 in the case of NSI Gold, and carries recurring surveillance audits. An acquirer values it as a barrier to entry it inherits and as independent evidence that the work meets standard.
How long before a sale should I start preparing?
Twelve to twenty-four months. The factors that move the multiple (the contracted revenue share, accreditation, management depth) cannot be changed inside a transaction timetable. Work started during a process tends to read as window dressing to an experienced buyer.
Is now a good time to sell a fire and security business?
Buyer competition is unusually strong and there are at least seven active, well-funded acquisition platforms in the UK market. Against that, consolidation is well advanced, and the regulatory tailwind is slower to convert into revenue than headline obligations suggest. The stronger argument is not to rush a sale, but to prepare properly while multiple credible buyers are still in the market.
Talk to someone who has sat on both sides of the table
Bayside Advisory works with owner-managed businesses typically six months to three years from a sale or fund raise. Every engagement is led by a founder: there are no associate layers and no handoffs.
If you own a fire, security or compliance business and want a straight answer on where you would sit in the range today, and what would move you up it, we should talk. Book an Introductory Call. All initial conversations are strictly confidential.
Sources
Grant Thornton, UK fire and security sector M&A review 2025 · DC Advisory / Fairgrove, Igniting Growth: Organic Levers for UK Fire & Security Services, March 2026 · Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, regulations 7 and 10 · Building Safety Act 2022, section 156 · MHCLG, Fire prevention and protection statistics, England, year ending March 2025 · Wilson Partners, Fire & Security Insights, 2024 · House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee, December 2025 · MHCLG, Building safety remediation monthly data release, April 2026 · Bayside Advisory sector benchmarking, 2023 · Mark to Market transaction data, UK fire safety services and security & surveillance deals completed October 2024 to September 2026, accessed 30 September 2026 · Building Safety Regulator, building control approval application data, April to June 2026 · BAFE, SP205 version 6 implementation dates.