Fire safety for care premises

Resident vulnerability runs through every part of a care home’s fire strategy. Reduced mobility, dementia and other cognitive impairments mean a proportion of residents cannot self-evacuate in a fire, and some cannot follow an instruction to move even with encouragement. A fire risk assessment for a care setting has to work from the actual dependency level of the people living there, not an assumed average, because two homes with the same bed count can need very different staffing and evacuation arrangements depending on who lives in them.

That dependency is why most care homes evacuate progressively rather than all at once. Progressive horizontal evacuation moves residents through fire doors into an adjoining, fire-resisting compartment on the same floor rather than out of the building immediately, buying time without asking staff to move everyone down a stairwell in one go. It only works if the compartmentation, the fire doors and the staff response are all doing their part, which is why we come back to those three things throughout this page.

Staff dependency is the practical reality behind that strategy. Where residents cannot evacuate themselves, staff on duty are the ones who identify a fire, raise the alarm, move residents who need help and follow the evacuation plan. Staffing levels are lower overnight than during the day in most care settings, at the point when most residents are also in bed and least likely to notice a developing fire themselves, so a strategy built around daytime staffing will not necessarily hold up at 3am.

Sleeping risk therefore applies across most of the day in a care home in a way it does not in an office or a shop. Residents may be resting in their rooms at any hour, not only overnight, and a fire safety strategy has to assume that detection, escape provision and staff response all need to work whether it is midday or the middle of the night.

Detection in a care home has to reach residents who may not notice a developing fire themselves and alert staff quickly enough to act on their behalf. A fire alarm system designed for a care setting, in line with BS 5839-1, needs to cover bedrooms, communal areas and staff-only spaces, with a design that reflects sleeping risk throughout rather than only overnight. Once a system is in, our fire alarm servicing and maintenance keeps it tested to the schedule BS 5839-1 sets out, and clear zone plans let staff identify which room, corridor or compartment an activation relates to without searching room by room, which matters when moving quickly to the right location is what a progressive horizontal evacuation depends on.

Fire doors carry more weight in a care home than in almost any other premises type, because progressive horizontal evacuation depends entirely on compartments holding back fire and smoke for as long as they are designed to. Our fire doors service covers supply, installation and inspection of door sets rated to what the building needs, and we pay particular attention to the issues that quietly undo a compartmentation strategy: doors wedged open for ease of access, self-closers that have been disconnected or are not closing fully, and seals damaged through daily use. A fire door that does not close is not a smaller version of the protection it is meant to provide. It provides none.

Resident dependency in a care home changes as people are admitted, their needs progress or they move on, and staffing patterns can shift too. Reviewing your fire risk assessment when resident dependency changes materially, and keeping servicing records up to date across alarms, doors, lighting and extinguishers, is what keeps a care setting’s fire safety arrangements matched to the people actually living there, rather than reflecting how the building was occupied when the assessment was last done.

Tell us about your care premises, the building layout and how it is staffed, and we will talk you through what it needs. We work with care providers across our service locations, including Birmingham, Walsall, Worcester, Worcestershire, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, South Gloucestershire, Herefordshire.