To my mind, the reasons why reviews are required are three-fold:
- To ensure that whatever was there before is still present, is functioning & is being maintained;
- To identify whether any changes have been made (physical, management or use) since the last assessment/review & to assess the impact of those changes;
- To check that nothing vital was missed during the last assessment/review (particularly if a different person is doing the review).
Unless you have a very effective and water-tight change control and management system (few, if any, do), your on-going management processes are unlikely to pick the above up with absolute reliability - hence the need for regular review. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that there will be an issue with one of the above. That might not matter much in a single-storey office, but it might be very important in a multi-storey hotel or hospital, or in a basement nightclub so you'd probably want to do a more frequent review in the latter than in the former. I would imagine that it's for this reason that no-one has wanted to put a 'standard' frequency in any of the guidance.
I'd say the periodicity should depend upon the situation. More frequent where there is a potential for regular/frequent changes and/or relatively high fire risk (so your dependence on the integrity of the fire protection is higher). Many recommend the frequency of review at the end of the FRA & I think this should be a matter of good practice and done intelligently (not just stick in a standard sentence that it should be done annually to get the repeat business)! Perhaps someone ought to produce a BS 9999 - style risk categorisation table that could be used?
