Evacuation strategies beyond stay put

For decades, the default fire strategy in purpose-built residential blocks in England was stay put, and for good reason. The strategy rests on a simple idea: if a fire starts in one flat, the compartmentation around that flat, the walls, floors and fire doors that contain it, holds the fire there long enough for the occupants of that flat to escape while everyone else stays safely in their homes. A whole building does not need to empty for a fire in one unit, because the building itself is designed to keep the fire from reaching the rest. When the building performs as designed, stay put is the safer course.

The difficulty is the conditional clause. Stay put depends entirely on the building actually performing as it was designed to. When that assumption is in doubt, the strategy that was the safest option becomes the most dangerous one, and the management of the building has to change with it.

Stay put is a promise the fabric has to keep

It is worth being precise about what stay put assumes, because the assumptions are where the strategy lives or dies. It assumes intact compartmentation between flats and between flats and common areas. It assumes fire doors that close and hold. It assumes that the external wall will not carry fire up the outside of the building, bypassing the internal compartments entirely. It assumes, in short, that the building is in the condition the strategy was written for.

The events of recent years made painfully clear that those assumptions cannot be taken on trust. The Fire Safety Act 2021 clarified that the fire risk assessment must cover the structure, external walls including cladding and balconies, and flat entrance doors, according to gov.uk, which is precisely a recognition that the things stay put depends on, compartmentation and the external wall, are the things that must be checked rather than assumed. A stay-put strategy resting on an external wall whose construction is unknown is not a strategy; it is a hope.

When the strategy has to change

Where the fabric cannot be relied upon, the fire strategy may have to shift, often on an interim basis while remediation is arranged. This is where evacuation strategies beyond stay put come in, and where the management burden rises sharply.

• Simultaneous evacuation means the whole building leaves at once on alarm, which usually requires a common alarm system the building may not have been built with, and a clear means for everyone to get out at the same time.
• A waking watch, where trained staff patrol to detect fire and raise the alarm, is sometimes used as a temporary measure while a more permanent system is installed or remediation proceeds.
• Phased or modified strategies sit between the extremes, evacuating part of a building while the rest holds, and depend heavily on the building's specific layout and systems.

Each of these is more demanding to run than stay put, because stay put asks the building to do the work and these strategies ask people and systems to do it instead. A waking watch is only as good as its coverage and its records. A simultaneous evacuation is only as good as the alarm that triggers it and the routes that carry it out. The strategy is no longer passive; it has to be actively managed, day and night.

Some people cannot simply leave

Any strategy beyond stay put runs straight into a hard reality: not everyone can self-evacuate quickly, or at all. Residents with mobility, sensory or cognitive impairments may need help to leave, and a strategy that assumes a building full of able-bodied adults descending stairs unaided is a strategy that has not been thought through. Knowing who in a building would need assistance, and planning for it, is part of making any evacuation strategy real rather than notional. We have written more fully about evacuation planning and the people who need it most, and it bears directly on every strategy beyond stay put, because those strategies depend on people moving when the able-bodied case is the easy one.

The strategy is only as good as the records behind it

Whatever strategy a building runs, its credibility lives in the records. A stay-put building has to evidence that the compartmentation it relies on is intact and maintained: fire doors checked, compartment lines understood, the external wall assessed. A building on simultaneous evacuation has to evidence that the alarm is tested and works, that the routes are clear, that residents know the plan. A building on a waking watch has to evidence that the patrols actually happen, on the rounds intended, with findings logged. In every case, the strategy is a claim, and the records are what make the claim defensible.

This is also why the strategy cannot be a document filed once and forgotten. A building's fire strategy is a living thing that has to track the building's actual condition. If compartmentation degrades, the assumption behind stay put weakens, and the strategy may need to be revisited. If remediation completes, an interim simultaneous evacuation may revert to stay put. The strategy and the building's real state have to stay in step, which is the same discipline that keeps the fire risk assessment honest, and it depends on knowing the building well enough to mark the strategy onto its building plans rather than holding it as an abstraction.

A short, practical close

Stay put is a sound strategy precisely when the building keeps the promises it depends on, intact compartmentation, working fire doors, an external wall that does not carry fire. When those promises are in doubt, the strategy has to move beyond stay put, and the management burden moves with it, onto people, systems, records and the residents who cannot simply walk out. The work is to know which assumption your strategy rests on, to evidence that the assumption holds, and to change course deliberately when it does not. SAMRISK keeps the strategy, the checks behind it and the people who need help all in one place, so the plan stays connected to the building it describes. This is general information rather than fire-engineering advice, and your fire strategy should be set and reviewed by a competent person.