Care home layouts and progressive horizontal evacuation

Care homes are not evacuated the way blocks of flats are. The accepted approach for care home evacuation planning is progressive horizontal evacuation: residents who cannot use stairs are moved sideways into an adjoining fire compartment on the same floor, and only then, if the fire grows, down or out. That single decision shapes the plan more than almost anything else a designer does, because it dictates where the compartment walls fall, how wide the corridors are and how many residents each wing can hold.

Which is why a care home layout that was drawn before the fire strategy was written usually has to be redrawn.

What progressive horizontal evacuation requires

The principle is that each storey with sleeping accommodation is divided into at least two protected areas, separated by fire resisting construction, each with its own escape route independent of the other. If a fire starts in one, its occupants move through the compartment line into the adjoining area and wait there in relative safety.

For that to work, three things have to be true at the same time. The adjoining compartment must have enough floor area to receive the people arriving from the affected one, including those in wheelchairs and those being moved in beds. The route between them must be usable by staff pushing a bed or operating a hoist. And the compartment line has to be real, which means no unprotected openings, no services penetrating without fire stopping and no door held open by a wedge at two in the morning.

Approved Document B sets out the guidance for residential care homes in England, and BS 9999 offers an alternative risk-based route where the building does not fit the standard solution. Either way the detailed design is a fire engineering exercise, and the planning layout either accommodates it or fights it.

Compartment sizes and their effect on the plan

The receiving compartment needs spare capacity. Space has to be found for the residents moved into it, in addition to its own occupants, at a floor area allowance per person that the fire engineer will set according to how those people move. A bed-bound resident needs several times the area of an ambulant one.

That requirement pushes in a particular direction architecturally. Long single-loaded corridors with bedrooms on one side produce compartments with very little communal space, so the receiving capacity is thin. Plans built around a lounge or dining area at the centre of each wing tend to work better, because the communal room is the place people are moved to. Where the brief is for a high bed count on a small site, the tension between bedroom numbers and compartment capacity is the first thing to test, before the external design is worked up.

Number of storeys matters too. A two storey home with generous ground floor communal space is straightforward. A four storey home with a small footprint needs either more compartments per floor or a second stair, and both cost floor area.

Corridor widths and moving people in beds

Corridor width here has little to do with people walking. In a care home the corridor has to allow a bed, a hoist and two members of staff to pass through a door and round a corner under pressure. Minimum widths from general guidance are often inadequate for that, and the practical width is set by the turning geometry at the tightest point rather than by the straight runs.

The consequences reach the planning drawings directly. Wider corridors increase the depth of the block or reduce bedroom sizes. Door sets on the compartment line have to be wide enough for a bed, which means double leaves in most cases and a structural opening to match. Turning bays at changes of direction eat floor area. None of this can be added later without losing bedrooms.

Staffing assumptions and why they are fragile

Progressive horizontal evacuation assumes staff are present, awake, trained and numerous enough to move the residents in the affected compartment within the time available. That assumption is the weakest part of the strategy and the part the planning system cannot control.

A fire strategy that depends on a night staffing ratio is only as good as the operator's future rostering. Nothing in a planning permission secures it. What the design can do is reduce the dependency: shorter distances from bedroom to compartment line, fewer residents per compartment, sprinkler protection to slow fire growth, and a layout where staff can see the corridor they are responsible for. Reviewers with fire engineering experience look for that redundancy, and its absence is a fair criticism of a scheme even when the numerical calculations pass.

Where the planning layout locks the strategy in

Several things are effectively fixed by the planning permission and very hard to change afterwards.

The last two are the ones most often missed at application stage. A scheme that fills the plot to the boundary constrains the external wall build-up. A scheme with no plant space shown has nowhere to put the sprinkler tank, and finding room for it later means losing a bedroom or an office.

Illustrative example: a 64 bed home on a suburban corner plot, three storeys, with the stair cores drawn at each end of a long corridor and the lounges placed on the ground floor only. Upper floor compartments have no communal space to receive residents, so the fire engineer asks for a third compartment per floor. Two bedrooms are lost on each upper storey, and the scheme goes back to the client before validation.

Sprinklers and the expectations for this building type

Sprinkler protection is expected in new residential care homes in England, and the guidance in Approved Document B reflects that. Beyond the guidance, sprinklers change the whole balance of a progressive horizontal evacuation strategy, because they buy time and reduce the number of people who need to be moved at once.

For the planning application, the relevant points are spatial rather than technical. Where is the tank, where is the pump room, what is the water supply, and is there a route for the incoming main. A Fire Safety Strategy that assumes sprinklers without showing where the equipment goes is not finished.

Presenting the strategy at application stage

Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires a fire statement with applications for relevant buildings, which are defined by reference to dwellings and educational accommodation above a height threshold. A care home is not automatically caught by that definition, so check whether your building falls inside it rather than assuming either way. Separately, care homes above the height and storey thresholds are treated as higher-risk buildings during design and construction under the Building Safety Act 2022 framework, which brings the Building Safety Regulator into the process after planning.

Whether or not a statutory Fire Statement is required, submitting a clear strategy with the application is usually worth it. Include the compartment lines on the floor plans, the escape routes from each protected area, the receiving capacity assumptions, the fire service access route and hardstanding, and the location of plant. Officers and their consultees can then comment on something concrete instead of asking for it by condition.

Both documents are fire engineering documents. A person with the necessary fire engineering competence is legally required to prepare a fire statement at Planning Gateway One, and a BS 9991 or BS 9999 strategy needs the same competence. Any draft PlanScope produces is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute, and for specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. The same principle applies when fire strategy meets historic fabric, as it does with escape provision in listed buildings.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.