The Fire Safety (England) Regulations and planning design
Secure information boxes, wayfinding signage and firefighting lift checks are operational duties, but they presuppose space, access and visibility that have to exist in the design. Here is what planning drawings should anticipate.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 are operational rules aimed at whoever manages an occupied residential building, and most architects read them as somebody else's problem. They are not. Every duty in them assumes a physical feature that has to exist: a box within reach of the entrance, a landing wall that can carry legible signage, a lift that can be tested monthly, a riser inlet the fire service can find. If the design does not accommodate those things, the responsible person inherits a building they cannot lawfully run.
The Regulations were made under Article 24 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, following the Fire Safety Act 2021, and they came into force in January 2023. Requirements are tiered by height.
What the Regulations require
Three tiers, broadly.
Any residential building with two or more sets of domestic premises and common parts: the responsible person must give residents information about fire doors and about the fire safety arrangements for the building.
Buildings above 11 m in height: quarterly checks of fire doors in common parts and annual checks of flat entrance doors, using best endeavours where access is refused.
High-rise residential buildings, meaning at least 18 m in height or at least seven storeys with two or more sets of domestic premises: the full set. Monthly checks of lifts intended for use by firefighters and of other relevant firefighting equipment, with faults reported. Building floor plans and a single-page building plan supplied electronically to the local fire and rescue service and held in a secure information box on site. Wayfinding signage visible in low light or smoke. Information about the external wall construction provided to the fire and rescue service.
None of that is a planning requirement. All of it is a design constraint in the same way that a bin store or a substation is.
Secure information boxes and where they go
The secure information box is the clearest example. It holds hard copies of the floor plans, the single-page building plan showing the environs, and the name and contact details of the responsible person. It has to be secure, accessible to the fire and rescue service, and findable in the dark.
That means a position near the principal firefighting entrance, outside the line of the entrance doors, at a height that can be worked at while wearing gloves, weatherproof, and lit. On a scheme with a recessed entrance and a stone surround, deciding that in month one gives you a flush box within a reveal. Deciding it in month thirty gives you a grey cabinet bolted to the elevation that the conservation officer never saw.
Agree the position with the local fire and rescue service. They have views, and those views are easier to accommodate before the planning drawings are fixed.
Wayfinding signage and floor identification
High-rise residential buildings need signage identifying floor numbers and flat numbers, visible in low light or smoke conditions, on every landing of the protected stairway. It sounds trivial. It is not, on two counts.
First, legibility in smoke means photoluminescent or illuminated signage at a height and size that works when visibility is near zero, which is a lower position than conventional signage and a larger character size than most architects specify. Second, the landing has to have a wall for it. Core designs that put a lift door, a riser cupboard, a flat entrance and a smoke shaft around a small lobby can leave nowhere sensible for the sign to go, and the result is a compromise fixed to a door leaf.
Set the flat numbering logic early too. A scheme where unit numbers were assigned by the sales team after planning, and do not run in a consistent direction on each floor, produces signage that is technically compliant and practically useless.
Lift and equipment checks assume access
Monthly checking duties presuppose that the equipment can be reached and tested without disruption. Firefighting lift motor rooms, riser valves, dry riser inlets, smoke control plant and evacuation alert panels all need maintenance access that does not run through a flat or require a cherry picker.
The planning consequence is modest but real: plant space, roof access, a safe route to it, and a position for the evacuation alert panel near the firefighting entrance where new blocks over 18 m provide one. Those spaces have to be in the massing and on the sections. Where they are missed, they appear later as a roof-level enclosure that changes the townscape assessment.
Design decisions that make compliance possible
| Duty | Design feature needed | Where it is fixed |
|---|---|---|
| Secure information box | Position near firefighting entrance, lit, weatherproof | Entrance elevation at planning stage |
| Wayfinding signage | Landing wall with clear zone, agreed numbering logic | Core layout at planning stage |
| Monthly lift checks | Accessible motor room and safe roof route | Section and plant layout |
| Building plans to the fire service | Coordinated plan set, including environs | Drawing production |
| External wall information | Recorded build-up and test evidence | Specification, before Gateway Two |
| Fire door checks | Common part doors reachable, flat doors accessible | Core and corridor layout |
Two of those rows are worth dwelling on. The single-page building plan showing the environs is the drawing that tells a crew where the hydrants, the appliance position and the inlets are, and it is far easier to produce when the site plan was drawn with that in mind. And the external wall information duty has a long shadow, because it means somebody has to be able to state what the wall is made of, with evidence, years after the contractor has gone.
Where this meets the gateway regime
Gateway One is the planning stage. For relevant buildings, Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 requires a Fire Statement with the application, and the Health and Safety Executive is a statutory consultee. The statement addresses the principles: site access for the fire service, water supplies, the evacuation approach, and the way the design responds to fire safety.
Gateways Two and Three sit under the Building Safety Act 2022 and deal with the construction and completion of higher-risk buildings. The 2022 Regulations then govern occupation. The sensible reading is a single chain: what you draw at Gateway One has to be buildable at Gateway Two and manageable under the 2022 Regulations, and each stage is harder to unpick than the last.
The detailed strategy, including compartmentation, evacuation and firefighting provision, belongs in a Fire Safety Strategy prepared to BS 9991 or BS 9999 by a competent fire engineer. That competence is a legal requirement rather than a recommendation, and no AI draft changes it.
What the drawings should anticipate
Mark the secure information box position on the ground floor plan and the entrance elevation. Show the appliance position and the inlet with a dimension between them. Show the landing arrangement on the typical floor plan with the signage zone indicated. Show the firefighting shaft and any evacuation alert panel. Put the plant rooms on the section.
That is a short list, and none of it adds cost at planning stage. It does make the Gateway One consultation shorter, because the consultee can see that the duties will be capable of being met.
Reform in this area is still moving, and the position on commencement is worth checking against the published instruments rather than secondary commentary. The same caution applies to other reforms still waiting on commencement, and you can follow planning reform as it lands from the timeline. Note: the Regulations themselves are in force, so nothing here is contingent.
PlanScope can draft the structure of a Fire Statement from your project details and flag the facts that need confirming, and a fire engineer with the relevant competence is legally required to take responsibility for it. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. It is worth scoping the documents a tall residential scheme attracts at the same time.
This is general guidance, not 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.
Frequently asked questions
What do the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 actually require?
They impose duties on the responsible person for residential buildings with two or more domestic premises, scaled by building height. The fullest set applies to high-rise residential buildings, covering secure information boxes, wayfinding signage, monthly lift and equipment checks, building plans supplied to the fire and rescue service, and information given to residents about fire doors.
Which buildings count as high-rise for these Regulations?
Residential buildings at least 18 m in height or with at least seven storeys, containing two or more domestic premises. Buildings above 11 m pick up the fire door checking duties without the full high-rise set, and the resident information duty applies to any building with two or more domestic premises and common parts.
Is any of this a planning matter?
The duties themselves are not. What is a planning matter is whether the building can comply: whether there is a sensible position for a secure information box within sight of the entrance, whether landings can take legible signage, whether the fire service can reach the riser inlet, and whether plant and lift provision fits the massing shown on the drawings.
Where should a secure information box go?
Near the principal entrance used by the fire and rescue service, accessible from outside, secure, weatherproof and readily located in darkness or smoke. Agree the position with the local fire and rescue service rather than choosing it in isolation. It is a visible object on the entrance elevation, so design it in rather than fixing it to a finished façade.
Do these Regulations replace Approved Document B?
No. Approved Document B is guidance supporting the Building Regulations and governs how the building is constructed. The 2022 Regulations govern how an occupied building is managed, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. A new block has to satisfy both, and the planning fire statement sits ahead of either.
Who should advise on this at design stage?
A fire engineer with relevant competence. The planning fire statement under Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015 and any BS 9991 or BS 9999 strategy are fire engineering documents, and a competent professional is legally required for them. Treat any draft as a starting point for that person rather than a substitute.
Sources and further reading
This article is general guidance about the planning system in England and, where stated, the rest of the UK. It is not legal or professional advice. Check your local planning authority’s validation requirements and take professional advice for your specific site.