Fire statements at Planning Gateway One: scope and content

A fire statement must accompany an application for planning permission for development involving a relevant building, under Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. A relevant building is one containing two or more dwellings or educational accommodation that meets the height condition of 18 metres or more, or seven or more storeys. The statement has to be on the form published by the Secretary of State, and the Health and Safety Executive is consulted on it as part of Planning Gateway One. Submit an application without the statement where one is required and the authority will treat it as invalid.

This is a planning stage document about design principles. It is not the fire safety strategy that follows at the building control gateways, and confusing the two produces either a document that says nothing or one that arrives two years too early.

Which buildings trigger the requirement

Work through it in order.

1. Does the development involve a building containing two or more dwellings, or educational accommodation?
2. Does that building meet the height condition, measured as 18 metres or more in height, or seven or more storeys?
3. Is the application one to which the requirement applies, rather than falling within an exclusion in the Order?

Height is measured from ground level to the floor surface of the top storey, disregarding roof top plant and machinery. That definition matters on a sloping site, where the measurement point is not obvious, and on a scheme where a plant enclosure pushes the apparent height above the threshold without the floor of the top storey doing so.

A seven storey building can fall within the requirement even if it is below 18 metres, because either limb triggers it. Check both.

Read Article 9A itself for the exclusions rather than relying on a summary. The drafting has been amended and the scope is narrower in places than people assume.

What the form asks for

The published form is organised around the principles of the design rather than the detailed engineering. Expect to address:

• The site layout, including how it relates to surrounding buildings and spaces.
• Emergency vehicle access, hardstanding, and the water supplies available for firefighting.
• The principles and concepts applied to fire safety in the building's design, and why they were chosen.
• How the development has taken account of any fire safety policies in the development plan.
• Storage and management of waste, which is a common ignition source.
• The arrangements for ongoing management and maintenance of the fire safety measures.

Answer each section on its own terms. A statement that cross refers everything to a future building control submission fails the point of the exercise, which is to show that fire safety has influenced the layout, the massing and the access at the stage when those things can still change.

The most useful content is spatial. Where does an appliance stand, and can it reach the building. How wide is the access route and can a pump appliance turn. Where are the dry or wet riser inlets relative to that standing position. Where do residents go once they are outside. Those are planning questions with planning consequences.

The regulator as a consultee

The Health and Safety Executive, acting as the Building Safety Regulator, is consulted on applications caught by the requirement. Its response goes to the local planning authority, which remains the decision maker.

Programme accordingly. The consultation runs alongside the statutory determination period, and a request for further information in the middle of it will push you into an extension of time agreement. Applicants who have engaged the fire engineer early and produced a statement that answers the questions get shorter exchanges.

Where the scheme sits at the threshold, do not gamble on falling below it. A scheme designed at 17.9 metres that rises during technical design is a worse position than one that assumed the requirement from the start.

Competence of the author

The Order requires the statement to be on the published form. It does not name a qualification for the author. In practice the content calls for fire engineering judgement, and councils and the regulator both respond better to a statement prepared or endorsed by someone with that competence, typically a chartered fire engineer or a registered member of the relevant institution.

The practical test is whether the person signing can defend the design principles if the regulator asks about them. An architect who has filled in the form from a template, with no fire engineer involved, usually cannot.

Other disciplines make the same point more explicitly. Ecology has a licensing regime, and district level licensing for great crested newts still requires a licensed ecologist behind the paperwork. Fire has no equivalent licence attached to the planning form, which puts more weight on who you appoint. An AI-assisted draft can structure the document and set out the questions the form asks. It cannot make the engineering judgement, and it should not be submitted as though it had.

Validation consequences

An application that needs a fire statement and does not have one is invalid, which means the determination period never starts. Authorities differ in how quickly they tell you, and a fortnight can disappear before the invalidity notice arrives.

Three related traps.

The statement must be on the published form. A bespoke report covering the same ground is not the same thing, though it can sit behind the form as an appendix.

The form must be completed for the development as proposed, not for a generic building of that type.

Where the scheme changes materially during determination, the statement should be updated, because the regulator's response relates to what it was consulted on.

There is a fourth trap that is less obvious. A phased scheme may contain one relevant building and several that are not, and the requirement attaches to the development rather than to each block in isolation. Outline applications raise the same question in a different form, since design principles are hard to state before the parameters are fixed. Where either applies, ask the authority at pre-application how it expects the statement to be framed, and record the answer.

Coordinating with the design programme

The sequence that works:

1. Establish at concept stage whether the height condition is met, using the correct measurement.
2. Appoint the fire engineer before the layout is fixed, so access, standing space and riser positions influence the plan rather than being fitted around it.
3. Draft the statement alongside the planning drawings, with each answer tied to a drawing reference.
4. Submit, and expect a consultation exchange rather than silence.
5. Keep the statement live through any design changes before determination.

Two design decisions are effectively irreversible after permission. The position of the fire appliance access and hardstanding, because it usually occupies land that is otherwise landscape or parking. And the core arrangement, because a change to stair provision reorganises every floor plate.

Follow changes to the regime through the planning law timeline, and use the report types to scope the wider document set. To see which documents a scheme is likely to need, enter your postcode on PlanScope.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.