What Do The New Fire Safety Evacuation Regulations Require Landlords To Do?

Which buildings are in scope?

Regulation 3 defines a specified residential building as one containing two or more sets of domestic premises which is at least 18 metres in height above ground level, or has at least seven storeys, or is more than 11 metres in height and operates a simultaneous evacuation strategy. Height is measured to the top storey in accordance with Appendix D of Approved Document B, and storeys below ground do not count. 

Interestingly scope is not a fixed property of the building. A block above 11 metres that moves to simultaneous evacuation because compartmentation can no longer be relied on comes into scope on the day that decision is taken. A block that returns to stay put drops out of it. If your compliance register is a static list of buildings over 18 metres, it could drift out of date. This is where the fire safety team, the asset team and the policy team need to coordinate together.  

The regulations are tenure blind. Social rent, affordable rent, shared ownership, leasehold and private let are treated identically. The only question is whether the building meets the definition. 

The building plan, and what it has to contain 

Under regulation 13, the responsible person must prepare a building emergency evacuation plan for every building in scope. It must set out the instructions given to residents about the evacuation strategy for that building, confirm whether there are relevant residents living in it, and describe any other arrangements for evacuating it, an evacuation alert system for example. 

A copy goes to the local fire and rescue authority and into the secure information box where one is installed. It is reviewed no later than 12 months after it is first prepared and before the end of every 12 month period after that, and again whenever there is reason to believe it needs amending. Where a review produces an amendment, the updated plan goes back to the fire and rescue authority and into the box as soon as reasonably practicable. 

This is a document about a building. It can largely be prepared from information an asset or compliance team already holds, and it is the more straightforward of the two duties.  

The resident plan, and why it is harder 

The residential personal emergency evacuation plan is a different kind of work altogether. Under regulation 4, a relevant resident is someone for whom the building is their only or principal residence and whose ability to evacuate without assistance is compromised because of an impairment or condition. That covers physical mobility, sight and hearing, and cognitive conditions. It can cover a temporary condition too, and the judgement about a broken leg is really a judgement about how long it is likely to last and what is proportionate in the meantime. 

The duty then runs as a sequence.  

• Identify relevant residents using reasonable endeavours, at the point of letting, annually, and on request, recording those who do not engage.  

• Offer a person centred fire risk assessment to each one identified, and carry it out where the offer is accepted.  

• Put in place reasonable and proportionate mitigating measures in light of what that assessment finds.  

• Agree and record an emergency evacuation statement setting out what that resident should do in a fire, and give them a copy.  

• Review the assessment, the measures and the statement at least every 12 months, and sooner if the building changes, the resident asks, or something did not work as expected in a drill or a real incident.  

• Then, with the resident’s explicit consent, share the flat number, the floor number, the degree of assistance required and whether a statement is in place with the fire and rescue authority. 

A person centred fire risk assessment is a structured conversation, not a technical survey. The government’s Responsible Persons toolkit is useful, because it is built around what other landlords have done. The questions are practical ones, whether somebody can manage the stairs in an emergency being the obvious example. Nobody needs access to medical records. The mitigating measures it describes are practical too, vibrating pillow alarms, fire retardant bedding, misting and sprinkler systems, remote monitoring, arrangements with a carer or a neighbour. 

Two features of this duty to note: Residents cannot be compelled to take part, which means non engagement has to be recorded and revisited rather than treated as an absence of risk; and identification is a continuing obligation rather than a one off exercise, which means it belongs in lettings, in tenancy management and in repairs, not only in compliance. 

Why the distinction between the two plans matters 

A building plan is a statement about a structure, and it will be broadly stable between reviews. A resident plan is a statement about a person, and people change. Someone who could manage the stairs in March may not be able to in October. A hospital discharge, a new condition, a care package starting or ending, a child with a respiratory condition moving in. None of these touch the building, and all of them change the plan. 

Which is how an organisation ends up fully compliant on paper for its buildings and materially exposed on its residents. The building plan can be produced by people who never meet anybody who lives there. The resident plan cannot. 

Who pays 

Cost allocation has been the contested part of this in leasehold blocks, where the rules turn on who benefits from a measure, what the lease permits, and whether the charge can be challenged at the First tier Tribunal. For social landlords the position is more settled. Government has committed dedicated funding so that social renters are not charged for these measures, through the Residential PEEPs Social Housing Fund. 

Where the challenge will come from 

Fire safety regulation generally carries limited case law and uneven enforcement, and this regime is far too new to have produced a body of judicial decisions or Ombudsman determinations. That is not reassurance. It is a gap, and it will be filled. 

Enforcement sits with the local fire and rescue authority, which can serve an enforcement notice under article 30 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Offences under article 32 carry an unlimited fine and up to two years imprisonment. For higher risk buildings, the accountable person’s duties under the Building Safety Act 2022 sit alongside. For registered providers, the Regulator of Social Housing can treat systemic failure as a breach of the Safety and Quality Standard. And a resident who feels they were never asked will go to the landlord’s complaints process first and the Housing Ombudsman after that. 

My expectation is that the contested question will rarely be whether the plans exist. It will be whether identification went far enough. Did the process reach residents who do not answer the door, who do not read English easily, who do not think of themselves as disabled, or who do not trust the landlord enough to disclose anything. Reasonable endeavours is the statutory standard, and reasonable endeavours is exactly the kind of phrase that gets defined by somebody else’s determination if you have not defined it for yourself first. 

Disability Rights UK and Inclusion London have both argued that the regulations do not go far enough. Whatever view you take on that argument, it tells you where the scrutiny is going to come from. 

Three things I would take from this 

1. This is one part of a much wider programme of building safety reform, not a standalone requirement, and it should be governed that way rather than run as a separate project with its own separate register. 

2. It is in force. It is not something the sector is preparing for, and the first annual review cycle will fall in April 2027. 

3. Compliance here depends on knowing your residents as well as you know your buildings. The organisations that find this straightforward will be the ones that already hold good information about who lives in their homes and what those people need. The ones that struggle will be the ones where that information sits in four systems that do not talk to each other. 

There is a horizon to watch as well. Future primary legislation is expected to extend the assessment duty to fire safety risks inside the home itself, rather than stopping at the front door. That is not law yet, but the guidance already encourages responsible persons to cover the ground now, with the resident’s agreement, as good practice. 

So the question I would put to a board is a simple one. If you were asked tomorrow to evidence how you identified every relevant resident in every building in scope, and what you did about the ones who did not respond, could you? 

Image credit: Healthy Homes Hub