Evacuation lifts and what planning drawings must show

Evacuation lift planning drawings have to show more than a lift symbol in a shaft. The provision is a planning matter because it changes the core, and the core changes the plan: a protected lobby at every level, a refuge space that does not obstruct the stair, a secondary power supply with a route for its cabling, a two-way communication point, and a car large enough to take a wheelchair and an assistant. In London, Policy D5 of the London Plan 2021 expects development proposals to incorporate at least one lift per core suitable to be used for evacuation, subject to capacity assessment, and Policy D12 requires the fire safety evidence that goes with it.

Decide this before the core is drawn. Retrofitting it into a fixed floor plate is where schemes lose units.

Why evacuation provision is a planning matter at all

Means of escape is normally a Building Regulations subject, and Part M of the Building Regulations expressly leaves it out. So the instinct is to defer the whole question. Three things pull it back into planning.

The first is policy. Inclusive design policies, and in London the specific lift requirement in Policy D5, make the provision a plan requirement rather than a technical detail.

The second is the fire statement. Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 requires a Fire Statement with applications involving relevant buildings, and the form asks about means of escape for all occupants, including those who cannot use stairs. That question cannot be answered without having designed the core.

The third is simple geometry. An evacuation lift and its lobby take floor area. A scheme that discovers the requirement after planning permission either loses saleable area or returns for an amendment.

Core planning and the space an evacuation lift needs

An evacuation lift is not a standard passenger lift with a different label. The design requirements come from the fire safety guidance and the relevant British Standards for residential and non-residential buildings, and they bear on the plan in five ways:

1. A protected lobby at each storey served, separating the lift from the accommodation and from the stair.
2. A car size that accommodates a wheelchair and an assistant, which rules out the smallest lift models.
3. A protected shaft, with the shaft construction and any lobby doors shown.
4. A secondary or alternative power supply, which needs a cable route and switchgear space, both of which have to go somewhere on the plan.
5. A two-way communication system between the lobby and a management position, with the outstation position marked.

Add the plant space. Machine-room-less lifts reduce but do not remove the requirement for overrun and headroom, and a section drawing has to show it.

The practical consequence on a small urban block is uncomfortable. A single core serving six flats per floor can lose most of a flat to the lobby and lift shaft, so the honest options are fewer, larger units, a deeper plan, or a second core.

Refuge areas and their effect on circulation

A refuge is a relatively safe place from which a person who cannot use the stair can wait for assisted evacuation. It needs a clear space for a wheelchair that does not reduce the effective width of the escape stair or obstruct the flow of people leaving.

That last point is the one drawings get wrong. A wheelchair space drawn inside a stair landing often sits in the path of travel, which both impedes evacuation and makes the refuge unusable. Put the refuge in the protected lobby, dimension the clear space, and show the stair width clear of it.

Mark the communication point at every refuge. The system is a designed installation with its own standard, and the planning drawing simply needs to show that a position exists and that a riser serves it.

Where a building has more than one core, state which cores have evacuation lifts and how a resident in a part of the building served by another core reaches one. A plan showing one compliant core and three without it invites a consultee question.

Standards the designer is working to

Name them in the submission rather than claiming compliance in the abstract. The fire safety approved document covers evacuation lifts and firefighting shafts. The British Standards for fire safety in residential and in non-residential buildings set out the design of evacuation lifts, refuges and evacuation management. Evacuation alert systems in taller residential buildings have their own standard, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 impose duties on responsible persons in occupied buildings that the design has to make deliverable.

Cite the edition and date of each document relied on, because guidance in this area has moved repeatedly. A statement referring to a superseded edition is the easiest thing for a consultee to pick up.

Government has also consulted on arrangements for personal evacuation planning in residential buildings. Treat that as proposed rather than settled, state the position as at the date of the submission, and design so that a management arrangement of that kind can work.

Coordination with the accessible housing requirement

The accessible housing policy and the evacuation provision have to be read together, and they often are not. Where a policy requires a proportion of dwellings built to the wheelchair user standard under Part M, those dwellings are distributed through the building, which means wheelchair users will live above the ground floor, which means assisted evacuation has to work from those floors.

Two failures recur. A scheme provides the required proportion of wheelchair user dwellings but places them in a core without an evacuation lift. Or it places them all on the ground and lower floors to avoid the problem, which conflicts with the policy expectation that accessible homes are distributed across tenures and floors.

Resolve it on a schedule. Produce a table of units by floor, by core, by tenure and by accessibility standard, and show which evacuation lift serves each. That schedule belongs in the Design and Access Statement, and it answers the inclusive design question and the fire question at once. An Equalities Impact Assessment draws on the same material where the authority requires one.

Evidence in the fire statement

The statement should carry the evacuation strategy, the core arrangement, the lift provision per core, the refuge positions, the communication arrangement and the management expectation after handover. Cross-reference the drawings by number and revision.

Be specific about the strategy. A stay put strategy still needs assisted evacuation arrangements for those who cannot use the stair if the strategy fails or if a floor has to be cleared. A simultaneous evacuation strategy puts far greater demand on the lift and the refuges. The strategy and the lift provision have to be consistent, and a statement that describes one while the drawings show the other is the commonest inconsistency a consultee finds.

A Fire Safety Strategy prepared to the relevant British Standard follows at the later gateway, and both it and the fire statement require a licensed or competent professional as a matter of law. An AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for their work.

Where the core cannot take it

Sometimes the honest answer is that the plan does not work. Four responses, in order of how often they succeed:

1. Reduce the number of units per core and increase their size, so the lobby area is a smaller proportion of the floor.
2. Deepen or widen the core envelope at design stage, accepting the loss of area as a cost of the policy.
3. Add a second core, which usually only works above a certain floor plate size.
4. Reconsider the building form, because a slab block with a single central core is often the wrong typology for the requirement.

What does not work is asking for a departure on viability grounds alone, or deferring the question to the later gateway and hoping. An illustrative case: a nine storey block with a single core and seven flats per floor, where adding a compliant evacuation lift and lobby took the core from two lifts to three and reduced the floor to six flats. The scheme recovered the unit count by adding a storey, which then brought a fresh set of height and daylight questions. That example is illustrative only.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. To see what a fire statement draft will ask you for, browse the PlanScope report types by category.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.