Emergency lighting before the clocks go back, and the test nobody writes down

The clocks go back at 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026. From the Monday after, anyone leaving an office, a school or a block of flats after about five o'clock is doing it in the dark. If the fire alarm goes and the mains supply goes with it, the only light on the stairs is the emergency lighting, and it only works if the batteries are still holding a charge.

October is a good month to find out whether they are.

What the law asks for

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to the common parts of blocks of flats and to almost every non-domestic building. Article 14 says that emergency routes and exits which need illumination must have emergency lighting of adequate intensity in case the normal lighting fails. Article 17 says that the equipment provided must be kept in efficient working order and good repair under a suitable system of maintenance.

The Order does not say how often to test. That is where the British Standard comes in.

What changed in BS 5266-1

BS 5266-1 is the code of practice for emergency lighting of premises. BSI published a full revision on 29 October 2025, replacing the 2016 edition. It aligns the UK code with the European standards it sits alongside, EN 1838 and EN 50172, and it now covers standby and local area lighting as well as escape lighting.

The routine testing most buildings rely on has not changed:

• A short functional test of every emergency luminaire and exit sign at least once a month. The mains is cut, usually with a key switch, and someone walks the building checking that each fitting lights.
• A full rated duration test once a year, normally three hours, to prove the batteries can still carry the lights for as long as they were designed to.

The notable addition is a periodic check of the light itself. Every five years the installation should be inspected and its light levels measured and compared against the original design, rather than assumed to still meet it. Fittings get moved during refits, lenses discolour and partitions go up, and none of that shows in a monthly flick test.

Where it usually goes wrong

The annual duration test is normally fine, because a contractor owns the date and sends a certificate.

The monthly test is the one that slips. It falls to whoever is on site, it takes a walk round every floor, and in a lot of buildings the record is a logbook in a cupboard with the last entry in spring. When a fitting fails it gets mentioned to someone, and there is no date showing when it was found or when it was fixed.

The three-hour test also leaves the batteries flat for up to a day while they recharge. It should be done when the building is quiet, ideally in daylight, and not the afternoon before an evening event.

What to do this month

Before the clocks change, do a monthly test and write it down properly: the date, who did it, which fittings failed and what happened about each one. Walk the escape routes at dusk with the main lights off where you safely can, and look for dark patches at the bottom of stairs, at changes of direction and outside final exit doors. Check that the annual duration test is in date and that the certificate is with the building, not with the contractor. And find out when the installation was last measured against its design, because under the revised code that now has a five-year interval of its own.

Where SAMRISK puts it

SAMRISK holds the building and the land it sits on across thirty connected systems, twenty for the building and ten for the land.

Emergency lighting is its own category in the fire safety register, with each fitting held as an item against the building and marked on the building plans, so a failed light has a location as well as a date. The monthly test and the annual duration test sit on the compliance calendar with pass and fail history kept for each fitting. A failed fitting raises a maintenance job with an owner and a date, and the contractor who does the annual test is recorded through contractors and permits, with their certificate filed in documents.

Sources: Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, articles 14 and 17; BSI, BS 5266-1:2025 Emergency lighting, code of practice for the emergency lighting of premises, published 29 October 2025; GOV.UK, when do the clocks change, 2026.