Fire statement triggers by height and storey count

A fire statement is required with a planning application where the building is a relevant building: one containing two or more dwellings or educational accommodation, and meeting the height condition of 18 metres or more, or seven or more storeys. That requirement comes from Article 9A of the Development Management Procedure Order 2015, inserted in 2021, and it is a validation requirement. Submit without it and the application does not start.

The thresholds look simple and the measurement rules are where schemes get caught, particularly on sloping sites and where a lower ground floor is involved.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Which buildings the requirement applies to

Two conditions have to be met together. The building must contain two or more dwellings, or educational accommodation. And it must satisfy the height condition.

A single large house at 19 metres does not engage the requirement, because it contains one dwelling. A six storey office does not, because it contains none. A block of flats at 18 metres does, and so does a student accommodation building of the same height.

The requirement attaches to the application rather than to the whole site. On a masterplan with four blocks, the statement covers the relevant buildings, and the submission should say which blocks are relevant and which are not, with the measurements that show why.

Mixed use buildings need care. A building with ground floor retail and residential above is assessed on the whole building, including the commercial storeys, which pushes some schemes over the storey count that would otherwise sit below it.

The height and storey criteria and how they are measured

Height is measured from ground level to the floor surface of the top storey of the building. Not to the ridge, not to the parapet, and not to the top of the roof-level plant enclosure.

Two consequences follow. A building whose top storey floor sits at 17.6 metres is below the threshold even where the parapet reaches 21 metres. And a design that lowers floor to floor heights by 150mm across eight storeys can move a scheme across the line, which is a real design decision rather than a trick.

The sloping site rule is the one that surprises people. A building that measures 17.2 metres from the higher side and 18.4 metres from the lower side is a relevant building, because the measurement is taken from the lowest ground level adjoining the external walls.

Record the measurement on a drawing rather than asserting it in text. A dimensioned section showing the ground level reference, the top storey floor and the storeys counted removes the single most common consultation query on these applications. Verify the current measurement definitions in the Order before relying on them, since the drafting has been amended.

What the statement has to address

The fire statement covers fire safety matters so far as they relate to the land and the buildings on it, in planning terms rather than in the detail of a Building Regulations submission. The published form sets the structure, and the substance falls into familiar headings.

• The principles of the fire safety design and the strategy being followed, at a level consistent with the stage of design.
• Site layout, including the position of the building relative to boundaries and other structures.
• Emergency vehicle access, including routes, hardstanding and the ability of an appliance to reach the required positions.
• Water supplies for firefighting, including hydrant provision and flow rates, and who will provide them.
• The approach to means of escape at a strategic level, including the number and position of stairs.
• External wall construction and the restriction that applies to relevant buildings.
• Any site constraints that affect the above, such as a narrow access, a watercourse or a level change.

What it is not is a Building Regulations fire strategy. The planning stage asks whether the scheme is capable of being made safe within the layout proposed, and whether the site arrangements support that. Submitting a 200 page technical strategy at planning does not help, and submitting two paragraphs does not either.

Keep the statement consistent with the Design and Access Statement on height, storey count and materials, because inconsistency between the two is the most frequent reason for a consultation response asking which figure is correct.

The Building Safety Regulator as a statutory consultee

At Planning Gateway One the Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive is a statutory consultee on applications for relevant buildings. The authority consults them, and their response forms part of the material considerations.

Three things follow for programme. The consultation period runs alongside the determination period, so it does not add time if the statement arrives with the application and is adequate. An inadequate statement produces a request for further information and a delay that falls entirely on the applicant. And the response can ask for design change, particularly on access and water supplies, which costs far less to address at pre-application than at week ten.

Pre-application engagement on fire matters is worth the fee on any scheme near the threshold. The access and water supply points are the ones most likely to require layout change, and both are fixed early.

Who is competent to prepare the statement

The statement must be prepared by a person with the necessary fire engineering competence. This is a legally required professional, not an optional one, and the applicant should be able to say who prepared it and on what basis their competence rests.

A Fire Statement drafted with AI assistance is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for them. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.

Name the author and their qualification in the document. Authorities and the regulator both look for it, and an unsigned statement invites a question before anyone reads the content. Where the wider fire strategy is being developed in parallel, the Fire Safety Strategy is the technical document that sits behind the planning statement and follows the relevant British Standard.

Timing within the application process

The statement goes in with the application. It is a validation requirement, so an application submitted without one for a relevant building will not be registered, and the submission date moves to the day the statement arrives.

Build the sequence backwards:

1. Establish at feasibility whether the building is relevant, using a measured section rather than a rule of thumb.
2. Appoint the fire engineer at concept design, not at planning submission.
3. Resolve access and water supply questions before the layout is fixed.
4. Draft the statement alongside the design and access statement so the two agree.
5. Submit together, with the measurement drawing included.

Where a scheme sits just below the threshold, authorities still routinely ask about fire service access and water supplies as ordinary planning matters. The same stepped pattern applies to other obligations as a scheme grows, which the notes on space standards and unit mix at larger scales and energy and carbon requirements by scheme scale set out.

Interaction with later gateways

Planning Gateway One is the first of three. Gateway Two is the building control approval stage before construction begins on a higher-risk building, and Gateway Three is the completion stage before occupation, both administered by the Building Safety Regulator under the Building Safety Act 2022 regime.

The planning statement does not discharge anything at the later gateways, and a scheme approved at planning can still require substantial change to satisfy Gateway Two. What the planning stage does is lock in the things that are hard to change later: the footprint, the distance to boundaries, the access route, the stair core positions and the overall massing.

That is the argument for treating the fire statement as a design input rather than a submission document. A scheme designed around the fire strategy from concept arrives at Gateway Two with fewer surprises than one that produced a statement to satisfy validation.

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