Residential evacuation plans and workplace PEEPs, UK wide
Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans
An evacuation strategy that only works for people who can use stairs unaided is not an evacuation strategy. AL23 Safety writes workplace personal emergency evacuation plans and delivers the residential regime in force since 6 April 2026, for employers, landlords and building managers UK wide.
What is a personal emergency evacuation plan?
One person, one route, one set of arrangements that has been tested
A personal emergency evacuation plan sets out how a named individual will leave a building in a fire, what assistance they need, who provides it and what equipment or refuge is involved. It is written for the person rather than for a category. Two wheelchair users in the same building can need entirely different plans.
There are now two distinct regimes and they use different language. In workplaces the plan is called a PEEP and flows from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. In specified residential buildings in England the statutory document is an emergency evacuation statement, produced under the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025. The sector shorthand is "residential PEEPs", which is useful in conversation and wrong on paper. Get the terminology right in the document itself.
Who needs one
Two regimes, two triggers
- Employers and workplace responsible persons. Anyone who has identified a person whose escape would be slower or would need assistance, including employees, contractors and regular visitors.
- Responsible persons for specified residential buildings. A building containing two or more sets of domestic premises which meets either limb of the test. Limb one is at least 18 metres in height or at least 7 storeys. Limb two is more than 11 metres in height combined with a simultaneous evacuation strategy.
- Blocks above 11 metres on simultaneous evacuation. This catches many buildings on a temporary simultaneous regime pending cladding remediation. Owners frequently miss it.
- Any building whose fire strategy relies on a refuge. A refuge without a plan and a communication route is a holding position, not a solution.
- Mixed use buildings. A residential block over a retail or leisure unit can sit in both regimes at once, with different duties on different parties.
- Note the limit. The residential regulations apply to England. They do not create a general duty to evacuate every resident. The duty is to identify relevant residents and plan properly for them.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to assess the fire risk and establish appropriate procedures for evacuating relevant persons, which includes people whose ability to escape is impaired. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022, commenced on 1 October 2023, requires the fire risk assessment and the fire safety arrangements to be recorded in full whatever the size of the premises. Regulation 8 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires procedures for serious and imminent danger. The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 came into force on 6 April 2026 and sit on top of that for specified residential buildings.
Identify relevant residents
A relevant resident is one whose ability to evacuate without assistance is compromised by a cognitive or physical impairment or condition.
Offer a person-centred fire risk assessment
The responsible person must offer one to each relevant resident and carry one out on request.
Mitigate and record
Take reasonable mitigating measures, then prepare an emergency evacuation statement for each relevant resident and review it annually.
Share with the fire and rescue authority
Specified information must be shared, subject to the resident's consent, with data protection duties observed throughout.
Building emergency evacuation plan
The responsible person must prepare a building emergency evacuation plan and review it annually.
One honest caveat. Section 156(4) of the Building Safety Act 2022 inserts article 9A of the Fire Safety Order, on the competence of anyone appointed to assist with a fire risk assessment. It has not been commenced. Choosing a competent assessor is therefore a matter of judgement rather than a licensing check, which is a reason to look hard at credentials.
What the service covers
Both regimes, handled properly
- Identification of relevant residents through a proportionate engagement exercise, designed so that nobody has to disclose a diagnosis in order to be helped.
- The written offer of a person-centred fire risk assessment to each relevant resident, with a record of the offer, the response and any refusal.
- Person-centred fire risk assessments carried out in the resident's own home, covering mobility, cognition, sensory impairment, medication, oxygen use, hoarding risk and the practical route out.
- Assessment of reasonable mitigating measures, from door closers and detection upgrades to alarms linked for the hard of hearing, evacuation equipment and relocation options.
- An emergency evacuation statement for each relevant resident, written in the statutory form rather than as a generic PEEP template.
- The building emergency evacuation plan, describing the strategy, the arrangements for relevant residents and the interface with the fire and rescue service.
- Information sharing with the fire and rescue authority, handled with a clear consent record and a data protection position that has been thought about rather than assumed.
- Provision for a resident's representative where a resident wishes one to act for them.
- Workplace PEEPs for employees, contractors and regular visitors, including refuge use, evacuation chair arrangements and named assistance roles.
- Generic emergency evacuation plans for visitors whose needs are not known in advance.
- Evacuation chair and refuge communication reviews, including whether the equipment is in the right place and whether anyone is trained to use it.
- Integration with your fire evacuation plans and drills so that assisted evacuation is rehearsed rather than described, plus the annual review cycle for both the statements and the building plan.
Our process
Identify, offer, assess, plan, review
- 01
Scope and identify
We agree the regime that applies, then run the identification exercise for residents or the needs assessment for employees and visitors.
- 02
Offer and engage
We issue the offers, arrange visits and record every response including refusals, which matter as much as acceptances when the record is examined.
- 03
Assess in person
We carry out the assessments face to face, walking the actual route out with the person where they are able.
- 04
Write and mitigate
We produce the statements or PEEPs, set out the reasonable mitigating measures and prioritise them by the risk they remove.
- 05
Plan, share and review
We prepare the building emergency evacuation plan, handle the consented information share with the fire and rescue authority and set the review date.
What you get
Statements and plans that stand up to scrutiny
- A relevant resident register with the identification method, the offers made and the responses.
- Person-centred fire risk assessments for every resident who accepted one, in a consistent format.
- An emergency evacuation statement for each relevant resident, using the statutory terminology.
- A building emergency evacuation plan covering the strategy, assisted evacuation arrangements and the fire and rescue service interface.
- Workplace PEEPs and generic emergency evacuation plans where the workplace regime applies.
- A mitigation action plan with owners and dates, plus the annual review schedule for everything above.
What we need from you
The strategy, the plans and a way to reach people
- The current fire risk assessment and evacuation strategy, including whether the building is on simultaneous or stay put evacuation.
- Floor plans showing refuges, evacuation lifts, stair widths and final exits.
- Resident or staff contact arrangements so that we can make the offer and book visits.
- Any evacuation equipment already on site and the training records for it.
- A named contact who can authorise the information share once consent is in place.
Why AL23 Safety
Evacuation planning that includes everyone
Accountable
Where a plan depends on assistance nobody has agreed to provide, we say so. A statement that quietly relies on a neighbour is not a plan.
Practical, not just compliant
We write to the route the person will actually take, at the pace they will manage, with the equipment that is actually in the building.
One team, three disciplines
Fire safety, fire engineering and health and safety in-house, which matters when the answer is a change to the evacuation strategy rather than another form.
UK wide
We assess residential blocks and workplaces across the UK from our Manchester base.
Talk to us about your building
A short conversation will tell you which regime you are in
The 11 metre and simultaneous evacuation limb catches more buildings than owners expect. If you are unsure whether your block is a specified residential building, that is a five minute question.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usIt is if it contains two or more sets of domestic premises and meets either limb of the test. Limb one is at least 18 metres in height or at least 7 storeys. Limb two is more than 11 metres in height combined with a simultaneous evacuation strategy. The second limb surprises people. A block at 14 metres on a temporary simultaneous evacuation regime is in scope while that strategy is in place.
No. The duty is to identify relevant residents, offer a person-centred fire risk assessment to each and carry one out on request. A resident may decline. What matters is that the offer was made and that the offer and the response are recorded.
Information sharing with the fire and rescue authority is required, subject to the resident's consent. Data protection duties apply throughout. That means a consent record, a defined data set and a route for withdrawing consent. We build that into the process rather than bolting it on afterwards.
For a specified residential building in England the statutory term is emergency evacuation statement. Call it that in the document. "Residential PEEP" is fine as shorthand in a meeting. In the workplace, PEEP remains the ordinary term.
Both the emergency evacuation statements and the building emergency evacuation plan must be reviewed annually. You should also review after any change in a resident's needs, any change to the evacuation strategy and any significant building work. The annual review is a floor, not a ceiling.
The drivers are the number of relevant residents, how many accept the offer, how spread out the portfolio is and whether the building plan can build on an existing fire risk assessment or has to start from nothing. Identification and offers can run in weeks. Assessment visits then run at the pace residents allow. Call us with the block count and we will scope it against your portfolio, including our work across housing and property.
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