PLAIN-ENGLISH GUIDE
What is your building's evacuation strategy, and who decided it?
Stay put, simultaneous, phased. Most people managing a block can name the strategy but could not tell you where it came from, or what would have to change for it to stop being the right one. Since April 2026 it also decides whether a new set of legal duties applies to your building.
It is not a policy you write. It is a property of the building.
THE SHORT VERSION
An evacuation strategy answers one question. When there is a fire in this building, who leaves, when, and by what route.
Most people managing blocks treat it as something they decide. It is not. It follows from how the building was designed and built: whether the compartmentation holds, how many stairs there are, whether there is a communal alarm, whether smoke can be kept out of the escape route. The strategy is the consequence of those things, not a choice made on top of them.
Which is why the honest answer to "who decided it" is usually the designer, decades ago. Your job is not to pick one. It is to know which one your building has, check it still holds, and tell residents what it is.
Two documents tell you. The fire strategy says what the building was meant to do. The fire risk assessment says whether it still does it.
Stay put, simultaneous, phased
THE THREE YOU WILL MEET
The default
Stay put
Anyone in the flat where the fire is leaves. Anyone directly affected by fire or smoke leaves. Everybody else stays where they are unless they are told otherwise.
What the building needs
Compartmentation that holds. Flat entrance doors that do their job. A protected escape route. Usually a single stair, and usually no communal alarm.
Where you see it
The designed strategy for most purpose-built blocks of flats in England, and the one the building was constructed around.
The intervention
Simultaneous evacuation
Everybody leaves immediately. That is the definition used in the 2025 evacuation plan regulations: all persons in the building should leave immediately in the event of a fire.
What the building needs
A means of telling everybody at once, which usually means a common alarm system installing where there was none. Escape routes that can carry everyone at the same time.
Where you see it
Buildings where stay put can no longer be relied on. NFCC guidance treats it as a decision to be made and reviewed, not a permanent setting.
The middle ground
Phased evacuation
The floors most at risk go first, usually the fire floor and the one above, then the rest in a controlled order rather than all at once.
What the building needs
An alarm system that can signal different floors differently, and the management arrangements to run it. More design behind it than either of the other two.
Where you see it
More common in tall commercial buildings than in residential blocks, though it appears in mixed-use where the design supports it.
Five things the strategy obliges you to do
THE DUTIES THAT ATTACH
Find out what the strategy actually is
Not what people say it is. The fire strategy tells you what the building was designed to do. The current fire risk assessment tells you whether it still does it. If neither document exists, that is the first job, and everything below depends on it.
Tell residents, in writing, and keep telling them
Fire safety instructions must be displayed in a conspicuous part of the building, and they must include instructions relating to the evacuation strategy by name. They go to every new resident as soon as reasonably practicable after they move in, to all residents at least every 12 months, and again after any material change.
This one catches people out. It is not a high-rise duty. It applies to any building with two or more sets of domestic premises and common parts residents would evacuate through.
Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, regulation 9
Check whether the evacuation plan duties have caught you
Since 6 April 2026 a further set of duties applies to buildings with two or more sets of domestic premises that are at least 18 metres, or have at least seven storeys, or are more than 11 metres and have a simultaneous evacuation strategy.
Read that third limb again. A building under 18 metres and under seven storeys is pulled into the regime by its evacuation strategy alone. The strategy is not just an operational matter, it is a gate on a statutory duty.
Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, regulation 3
Treat a proposed change as a decision, not a switch
Moving a block to simultaneous evacuation is not a cautious default. It needs a way of alerting everyone at once, which usually means installing a common alarm where there was none, and it changes which regulations apply to you.
NFCC guidance sets out the decision-making process and cautions against on-site staffing arrangements kept running far longer than the actual risk justifies.
NFCC Simultaneous Evacuation Guidance, 4th edition, 17 August 2022
If it is a higher-risk building, it goes in the safety case
The emergency plan is one of the nine headings a safety case report must cover: the evacuation strategy, how residents are told what to do, provision for anyone who could not get out unaided, and what the fire and rescue service needs on arrival.
Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023, regulation 5
Myth
Stay put means nobody leaves the building.
Reality
It has never meant that. Anyone in the flat where the fire started leaves. Anyone whose flat or escape route is affected by fire or smoke leaves. Stay put applies to residents in flats that are not affected, and it has never required anyone to remain somewhere that is filling with smoke.
Myth
Grenfell proved that stay put does not work.
Reality
The strategy depends on the building, not the other way round. It holds where compartmentation performs and the escape route stays usable, and the National Fire Chiefs Council continues to support it for blocks built and maintained to do that. Where those things fail, the strategy fails with them. So the question worth asking is not whether stay put is sound in principle, but whether this building still supports it, and that is a question for the fire risk assessment.
Myth
Moving everyone to simultaneous evacuation is the cautious option.
Reality
It is an intervention with consequences. It needs a way of alerting everybody at once, which usually means installing a common alarm where the building never had one, and it can pull a block under 18 metres into the 2025 evacuation plan regulations through the 11 metre limb. NFCC guidance treats it as a decision to be made, reviewed and unwound, not a safer default to settle on.
Myth
We told residents when they moved in, so that is covered.
Reality
Regulation 9 wants it displayed in a conspicuous part of the building, given to every new resident as soon as reasonably practicable, given to all residents at least once every 12 months, and issued again after any material change. A welcome pack three years ago does not discharge it, and this duty is not limited to high-rise.
Four things people get wrong about this
WHAT IT DOES NOT MEAN
Go deeper
KEEP READING
The people side
Residential PEEPs
The duties owed to residents who could not get out unaided, in force since 6 April 2026. The strategy decides whether they apply to you.
Read the explainer →
Check yourself
Residential PEEPs readiness check
Work through where your building stands against the new duties and what is left to close.
Open the tool →
Where the duty sits
Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022
Regulation 9 is the one that makes you tell residents the strategy, and it applies to far more buildings than people assume.
Read the explainer →
Height and storeys
What counts as a higher-risk building?
Eighteen metres, seven storeys, eleven metres. Three different thresholds doing three different jobs. Which one applies, and when.
Read the explainer →
If it is higher-risk
Is your safety case ready?
The emergency plan is one of the nine headings a safety case report has to cover. See how much of the rest you already hold.
Open the tool →
Have it checked
Fire strategies and reviews
We commission new strategies and review existing ones to confirm they still hold, with no stake in what they conclude and no works arm.
See the service →
If nobody can tell you where the strategy came from, that is the finding.
We will read the fire strategy and the risk assessment against each other, tell you which strategy your building actually has, whether it still holds, and what the regulations oblige you to do about it. We commission none of the works that follow, so there is nothing for us to sell you at the end of it.