Evacuation lifts and inclusive escape in planning layouts

Evacuation lift planning application problems are core planning problems. A lift that can be used in a fire needs a shaft with its own protection, a lobby that works, power arrangements and a landing at every floor that does not block escape. Add a second staircase and a firefighting shaft and the core has grown before a single flat is drawn.

None of that is a Building Regulations detail to be sorted later. Change the core after permission and the unit count, the flat mix and the daylight to the inner flats all move with it.

Why escape provision is a layout issue

The clearest recent illustration is the second staircase requirement for new residential buildings above 18 m, confirmed in 2023 and brought into Approved Document B with transitional arrangements. Schemes designed around a single core had to be redrawn, and the ones that absorbed it best were those where the core had been planned with some slack in it.

Inclusive escape works the same way. A refuge is a defined space that must not obstruct the escape route. An evacuation lift is a shaft with protection requirements and a defined lobby. Both consume floor area in the exact position where the architect wants circulation, and both become far more expensive to introduce once the structural grid is set.

So treat them as planning stage decisions. The application drawings will show the core, and the core will be what the scheme is built around.

Refuge locations and core planning

In buildings other than dwellings, Approved Document B expects refuges for people who cannot use stairs unaided, typically located in a protected stairway, a protected lobby or a compartment adjoining and opening onto the stairway. The usual provision is a wheelchair space of around 900 mm by 1400 mm positioned so that it does not reduce the effective width of the escape route, with two way emergency voice communication to BS 5839-9.

The design failure repeated on floor plate after floor plate is a refuge drawn in the stair itself, narrowing the stair below the width the calculation assumed. If the refuge eats the escape width, it is not a refuge.

Blocks of flats have historically been designed on a stay put basis, with no general provision of refuges. That model is under pressure, and buildings with simultaneous evacuation strategies need the inclusive escape question answered in a way that a stay put building did not.

Evacuation lift provision and shaft sizing

An evacuation lift is not an ordinary passenger lift with a sign on it. It needs a protected shaft and lobby, a secondary power supply with separated routing, fire resisting cabling, controls that let the lift be taken under the control of those managing the evacuation, and a management procedure that says who operates it.

BS 9991, revised in 2024, sets out the guidance for residential buildings, and BS 9999 covers the equivalent ground for other building types. Both are fire engineering documents, and a Fire Safety Strategy built on them has to be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence. An AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional, never a replacement.

The planning consequence is dimensional. A shaft sized for a standard passenger lift with a standard lobby is usually smaller than the arrangement an evacuation lift needs, particularly once the lobby has to hold a waiting wheelchair user without obstructing anyone heading for the stair. Ask the fire engineer for the shaft and lobby footprint before the core is fixed, not after.

Lift car size follows accessibility guidance rather than fire guidance, and an accessible car in Approved Document M terms is a different dimension again.

Personal emergency evacuation planning

Personal emergency evacuation plans have been standard practice in workplaces for years. In residential buildings the position has moved, following the Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommendations and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, towards identifying residents who need support and recording arrangements for them.

As at September 2026, the residential policy is still being implemented through guidance and regulation rather than sitting in one settled document, so check the current position. What the designer needs to take from it is simple. A building whose escape strategy depends on people being carried down stairs by others is a building the operator will struggle to manage, and design choices that avoid that outcome are worth making at layout stage.

Equality duties and the application

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 places a public sector equality duty on the local planning authority in exercising its functions, which includes determining applications. It is a duty to have due regard rather than a duty to achieve an outcome, and it is discharged through the officer report rather than by a separate process.

Practically, that means an applicant who has thought about inclusive escape has an easier time than one who has not. Where a scheme is large, or where the authority asks for one, an equalities impact assessment sets out how the design responds to the needs of disabled occupiers and visitors. Accessible housing policy runs alongside this, and in London the London Plan requires a proportion of dwellings built to the wheelchair user standard, which interacts directly with escape strategy for those homes.

Effect on net to gross ratios

Every measure here takes lettable or saleable area out of the plan. A second stair, a larger evacuation lift shaft, a deeper lobby, a firefighting shaft and refuges together shift the efficiency of a residential floor plate in a direction the appraisal has to absorb.

Two responses work. Increase the floor plate so the core is a smaller proportion of it, which suits larger sites and does nothing for a tight urban plot. Or accept the efficiency and adjust the scheme, which usually means fewer, larger homes or a taller building where policy allows it.

The response that does not work is discovering the space requirement after permission and trying to fit it in by shaving circulation. That route ends with a scheme that is neither compliant nor consented.

Evidence to submit at application stage

A planning submission does not need a full fire engineering design. It needs enough for the authority, and for the Building Safety Regulator where Planning Gateway One applies, to see that the strategy is deliverable in the layout shown.

Provide the evacuation strategy in outline, the core plan showing stair widths, lobbies, refuges and lift shafts with dimensions, the position of any evacuation lift and its lobby, the accessible dwelling positions and their relationship to the escape route, and the assumptions that later stages will test. A Fire Statement is the vehicle for relevant buildings, and what the Building Safety Regulator looks for is consistent with this: a strategy that matches the drawings, and drawings that could actually be built.

If you are writing that document for the first time, the section structure in a worked Fire Statement is a reasonable starting frame.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority, building control body and a qualified fire engineer before relying on it.

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