Fire safety
BS 9991:2024 have recently encompassed ‘significant updates’ to reflect the ‘increasing complexity of modern building designs’ as well as the industry’s evolving knowledge and understanding of fire behaviour, materials, and fire safety systems. There can sometimes be a knee-jerk reaction to fire safety – particularly when instructing surveys to assess compartmentation and fire doors – without actually considering a care home’s wider fire strategy. The fire strategy ultimately determines the classification of walls and floor compartments or protected construction and, within this, which doors need to be fire rated.
For instance, compartmentation and fire doors should never be assessed in isolation; they are part of a far broader picture of the care home’s fire safety strategy, which should be evaluated as a whole. Having up-to-date records of floor plans, former building regulation approvals, fire alarm design criteria, and previous fire risk assessments all help in making an accurate assessment of the strategy to be adopted in the building at any given time against the backdrop of up-to-date legislation.
Developing the fire strategy The design of a care home must satisfy appropriate building regulations and British Standards, and be adequately protected from the risk of fire. Developing a comprehensive fire strategy is advised, using the BS 9991:2024 Fire Safety in the design, management, and use of residential buildings Code of Practice, as a more flexible approach.
For the purpose of fire safety and means of escape, care home residents must be considered as high dependency and an appropriate number of staff should be available in the building for means of escape at all times.
The management of a care home building must ensure appropriate fire and rescue service familiarisation takes place at regular intervals. In addition, there should be a written emergency evacuation plan, all staff should be trained accordingly, and appropriate numbers of fire wardens should be appointed for the building. The RRFSO requires Responsible Persons
to provide ‘suitable and sufficient’ fire safety training to their employees. This is important within any building type, but none more so than buildings occupied by vulnerable individuals. Fire warden training should be provided to relevant staff at the onset of their employment and be followed by – at a minimum – annual refresher training. Senior staff should consider more comprehensive training to gain sufficient competence in fire awareness and prevention, identifying fire hazards, fire risk assessments, and general fire safety management. Other important staff training elements should include the use of EVAC and fire-fighting equipment. While fire drills may be unsettling and impracticable for residents, staff should be fully versed with progressive horizontal evacuation procedures and protocols. There should also be adequate role succession planning in event of staff turnover A Premises Information Box (PIB) should
also be provided to the building, located at a suitable and accessible location for the emergency services. Contents should include accurate building plans detailing escape routes and fire safety equipment locations, instructions for evacuating residents along with information on occupants with particular vulnerabilities, procedures for isolating specific high risk areas, details about the building’s fire alarm system along with accurate alarm zone plans and information on any sprinkler systems, smoke control systems or other fire safety installations that may be provided to the building. Any relevant asbestos information should also be provided, as well as key personnel contact information. Additionally, there should be reliable processes in place to ensure the contents of the PIB are updated as required. Accurate floor plans are essential to ensure rooms and areas within buildings remain as originally designed and escape routes have not changed. Fire system design (passive and active) must be reviewed with testing and monitoring regimes in place. A Fire Risk Assessment should be
conducted by a competent person on regular intervals in accordance with RRFSO and, given the occupancy and potential for high staff turnover in the care environment, we would advise this be reviewed and updated annually. Any change in risk level should be addressed by the Responsible Person for the building, and this may require an up to date risk assessment being carried out should there be any significant changes to the building affecting the risk level, such as changes of occupancy number or type, including significant changes to staffing levels, changes to fire systems in place or fire safety management processes, additional/lesser parts of a building being used, or if legislation has changed that may affect the building and its operation. All of these elements need to be
reviewed by a competent fire professional that understands fire design, building construction, operational management, and documentation control, with specialist knowledge in: n Occupant characteristics n Evacuation strategies n Fire strategy plans n Fire training
Occupant characteristics While residents are expected to be generally aware of their surroundings, depending on their personal needs, it is expected they
September 2025
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