Fire evacuation strategy vs fire strategy

A fire evacuation strategy describes how people leave a building in a fire: who moves, in what order, by which route, assisted by whom. A fire strategy is the wider design document that makes that possible, covering compartmentation, escape route protection, alarm systems and fire resistance. The evacuation strategy is one output of the strategy.

That dependency is the whole point, and getting it the wrong way round causes real problems. A building manager writing an evacuation strategy without knowing the design intent is guessing about whether the building can actually support what the document promises.

The four evacuation approaches used in UK buildings

Almost every building uses one of four approaches, or a combination of them in a mixed-use building.

Simultaneous evacuation. Everyone leaves at once on the alarm. Standard for offices, schools, shops and most low-rise buildings. It requires escape routes and stairs sized for the whole occupancy moving at the same time.

Phased evacuation. The floor of the fire and the floor above evacuate first, then other floors in sequence. Used in tall buildings where evacuating everyone at once would overwhelm the stairs. Approved Document B volume 2 sets the conditions at paragraph 3.21: stairs approached through a protected lobby or protected corridor at every storey except the top one, lifts reached through protected lobbies, every floor a compartment floor, a fire warning system to at least the L3 standard in BS 5839-1, an internal speech communication system linking a control point at fire and rescue service access level to a fire warden on every storey, and sprinklers throughout if any storey sits more than 30 metres above ground level.

Stay put, also called defend in place. Residents outside the flat where the fire started remain in their homes. Standard for purpose-built blocks of flats. It depends entirely on the compartmentation between flats holding, and on the common escape routes being protected. Where compartmentation is compromised, the approach is not safe, and a temporary simultaneous evacuation arrangement is usually put in place until it is repaired.

Progressive horizontal evacuation. People move sideways into an adjoining fire compartment on the same floor rather than leaving the building. Standard in hospitals and care settings where moving patients down stairs is dangerous or impossible. It depends on adequate compartment sizes and on staffing.

Each of those is a promise about what the building does. The promise is made in the fire strategy.

The two documents compared

Fire evacuation strategy compared with fire strategy: scope, author, timing and legal driver.

Where the management document fits

A fire safety management strategy is the third document in the set, and it is the one most often missing.

It covers how fire safety is run day to day: who the responsible person is, who holds which duties, testing and maintenance regimes for alarms, emergency lighting, sprinklers and fire doors, staff training and drill frequency, permit-to-work arrangements for hot works, contractor control, and record keeping.

The relationship between the three is simple. The fire strategy sets the design intent. The management document sets the arrangements that keep the design intent true over time. The evacuation strategy sets what happens when the alarm sounds. Every fire strategy contains management assumptions, and those assumptions are precisely what the management document has to deliver. If the design assumed that doors are kept closed and nobody checks them, the design intent has quietly lapsed and nothing on paper records it.

For the wider strategic document that ties design intent and management together, see fire safety strategy.

What an evacuation strategy should contain

If you are writing one, cover these.

The evacuation approach and why it applies to this building. Alarm arrangements and what each signal means to occupants. Escape routes from every part of the building, with plans. Assembly points and the route to them. Roles: who sweeps, who takes the roll, who meets the fire and rescue service, who has authority to declare a full evacuation. Assisted evacuation, meaning refuge locations, evacuation lift arrangements and personal emergency evacuation plans for people who cannot use stairs. Arrangements for visitors and contractors who do not know the building. Out-of-hours and lone-working arrangements. Drill frequency, and how findings are recorded and acted on. And the trigger points for review.

Personal emergency evacuation plans deserve a specific note. They are individual plans agreed with a named person who would need help to leave. They are not a generic paragraph. Expectations for residential buildings have moved sharply. In England the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 came into force on 6 April 2026. They apply to residential buildings containing two or more domestic premises that are at least 18 metres in height or have at least 7 storeys, and to buildings over 11 metres operating a simultaneous evacuation strategy. The responsible person must identify residents whose ability to evacuate unaided is compromised by a physical or cognitive impairment, carry out a person-centred fire risk assessment on request, put reasonable and proportionate measures in place, record a written residential emergency evacuation statement, share the relevant information with the fire and rescue authority with the resident’s consent, and review the arrangements annually. Those regulations extend to England only.

Where evacuation strategies fail

Four failure patterns come up repeatedly.

The strategy assumes compartmentation nobody has verified. Most common with stay put in older converted blocks. The document promises that a fire will stay in one flat. Nobody has confirmed that the flat entrance doors, the compartment walls and the service penetrations actually deliver that. This is the most serious version of the problem by a distance.

The strategy was written for the previous use. The building became a hotel, or a floor was subdivided, or the ground floor became a restaurant, and the evacuation document never changed.

Assisted evacuation is a paragraph rather than a plan. Refuges exist on the drawings but nobody is assigned to attend them, and the evacuation lift has no operating procedure.

Nobody has drilled it. A phased evacuation that has never been practised is a theory, not a strategy.

Three of those four are diagnosed by comparing the evacuation strategy against the fire strategy. Where no fire strategy exists, the comparison cannot be made at all, which is why the two documents keep turning up together in enquiries.

Which one do you need

If you are designing, altering or changing the use of a building, you need the fire strategy first. The evacuation strategy follows from it. Start with a fire strategy report.

If you occupy or manage a building and have been asked for an evacuation strategy, you need to know what the building was designed to do before you can write one honestly. Where that information does not exist, a retrospective fire strategy is the way to establish it.

If you have both documents and they contradict each other, or the fire risk assessment has flagged that the evacuation arrangements are not supported by the building, that is work for a fire strategy consultant. Reports are arranged across England and Wales through a network of chartered fire engineers.