Evacuation is the organising principle.
Progressive horizontal evacuation
Care homes are designed for staged movement: residents are moved through fire-resisting compartment walls into an adjoining protected zone on the same floor, then further or downward only if the fire develops. The assessment verifies the physical basis — sub-compartmentation, 30/60-minute lines, fire doors on hold-open devices released by the alarm — and the operational basis: staff trained to execute the strategy, evacuation aids present and serviced, bed-widths compatible with door openings on the routes.
PEEPs for every resident
Generic plans fail here by definition. Each resident needs a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan reflecting mobility, cognition (dementia responses to alarms include hiding and resistance), sensory impairment, bariatric handling needs and medical equipment — kept current as dependency changes, which in care settings is constantly. The assessor samples PEEPs against the residents actually in the building.
The night staffing calculation
The decisive question: with the night complement on duty, how many dependent residents can be moved to safety within the protected time? The assessment tests staffing against the evacuation strategy zone by zone. Where the arithmetic fails, the findings drive either staffing, compartmentation improvement or occupancy decisions — there is no paperwork fix.
Technical provisions expected.
| Provision | Standard expected in care settings |
|---|---|
| Detection & alarm | BS 5839-1 category L1 — coverage throughout, addressable indication so staff go straight to the room |
| Doors | FD30S throughout resident areas; hold-open devices alarm-released, never wedges |
| Emergency lighting | BS 5266-1 across all routes and care areas |
| Bedrooms | Ignition control: smoking policy and paraphernalia management, emollient cream risk, oxygen storage and signage, electrical items checked |
| Kitchen & laundry | Commercial kitchen controls; dryer ducting cleaned — laundry is a recurring care-home ignition source |
| Suppression | Sprinklers increasingly specified in new builds and expected in Scotland; assessed case-by-case in existing English stock |
The CQC interface
Fire safety failures in care are regulated twice: by the fire and rescue authority under the Order, and by the Care Quality Commission under Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), where premises safety is inspected and rated. Enforcement in one regime reliably triggers scrutiny in the other, and coroners' Prevention of Future Deaths reports have repeatedly cited stale assessments and unexecuted PEEPs. Review frequency here is commonly six-monthly, not annual — see review triggers.