Relevant buildings and the Article 9A fire statement duty

Whether your scheme is a relevant building fire statement case turns on a single definition in Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. A relevant building is one that contains two or more dwellings or educational accommodation and meets the height condition: 18 metres or more in height, or seven or more storeys. Hit that and the application cannot be validated without a fire statement on the published form. Miss it and no fire statement is required at planning stage at all, whatever the building control position.

The definition is mechanical, which is useful, because it means you can settle the question on the drawings before you submit rather than discovering it when the validation officer writes back.

What Article 9A requires

Article 9A was inserted into the 2015 Order to give effect to Planning Gateway One. Where an application for planning permission relates to development involving one or more relevant buildings, it must be accompanied by a fire statement in the form published by the Secretary of State. The Health and Safety Executive is a statutory consultee on those applications, acting through the Building Safety Regulator function.

Two points are frequently misread. The duty attaches to the application, not to the building's eventual use, so an outline application capable of delivering a relevant building engages it. And the fire statement is a planning document about the matters planning can influence: site layout, access and water supplies for the fire service, the position of the building relative to others, and the principles of the emergency evacuation strategy. It is not the building control fire strategy in miniature.

The consultee response can shape the layout materially, which is why the statement belongs in the design conversation and not at the end of it. The product page on the Fire Statement sets out what the document covers.

The height condition, measured properly

Height is measured from ground level to the floor surface of the topmost storey, ignoring any storey that is a roof-top machinery or plant area or consists exclusively of machinery or plant rooms. That definition is the same one used across the higher-risk building regime, and it is not the same as the height to the ridge or to the top of a parapet.

Ground level for this purpose is taken at the lowest part of the surface of the ground adjacent to the building, which matters on a sloping site. A building that is six storeys on the uphill side and seven on the downhill side is measured from the low point.

Counting storeys without getting it wrong

Storey counting is the part that generates disagreement. A mezzanine may or may not be a storey depending on its area relative to the storey it sits in. A basement or lower ground floor may or may not count depending on its relationship to ground level. A plant-only top level is excluded.

The safe approach on a marginal scheme is to set out the count on a section drawing with each level named and a note explaining the treatment of any level you have excluded. Do that in the design and access statement as well as in the fire statement, because two readers will check it. Where the count genuinely sits at six or seven, assume the authority will take the higher reading unless your drawing removes the doubt.

A scheme that adds a storey during design development crosses the threshold silently. Put a check on the change control list.

Residential units, mixed use and student accommodation

The duty applies to buildings containing two or more dwellings and to those containing educational accommodation. In practice that covers blocks of flats, and it covers student accommodation and boarding accommodation where it falls within the educational accommodation description.

Mixed use buildings engage the duty when the residential element brings the building within the definition, so a tall building with commercial floors below and flats above is a relevant building. The commercial floors still count towards the height and storey figures, because the measurement is of the building rather than of the residential part.

Buildings containing a single dwelling do not engage it however tall they are. Hotels, offices and hospitals do not, which surprises people, because the higher-risk building definition for building control purposes does not map exactly onto the Article 9A planning definition. Two regimes, two definitions, both worth checking separately.

What falls outside the duty

Some applications relating to a relevant building do not require a fire statement. Applications for outline permission where fire safety is reserved, applications under section 73 or section 96A, applications for approval of reserved matters, applications for permission in principle and applications for technical details consent are treated differently, and the drafting in the Order sets out which are excluded.

Householder applications, changes of use not involving building work, and applications relating to buildings below the threshold are outside it entirely. Do not submit a fire statement where none is required. A document that is not a validation requirement still gets read and still attracts comments, and an unnecessary one can generate a consultation response the scheme did not need.

Where the building falls below the threshold but fire service access is still a planning issue, the right home for that is the design and access statement and the access strategy, not a form designed for a different purpose.

Where the duty overlaps with building control

Gateway One sits at planning. Gateway Two sits before construction begins and Gateway Three before occupation, both administered under the Building Safety Act 2022 framework by the Building Safety Regulator. The planning stage deals with what planning can control, and the later gateways deal with the detailed fire engineering.

The practical risk is inconsistency. A fire statement describing a single stair with an evacuation lift, followed by a Gateway Two submission describing something different, invites questions at the worst possible moment. Keep one version of the evacuation strategy and update both documents from it. Where a full Fire Safety Strategy to BS 9991 or BS 9999 is being developed in parallel, the planning statement should be a subset of it rather than a separate account.

Structural and ground matters run on the same programme and it is worth checking early whether the scheme also needs a Geotechnical Assessment, particularly where basement levels affect the storey count.

Checking the position before validation

Five minutes of checking saves a fortnight of invalidation.

1. Take the height from the lowest adjacent ground level to the top storey floor surface, on a dimensioned section.
2. Count the storeys, annotating any level you have excluded and why.
3. Confirm the accommodation type: two or more dwellings, or educational accommodation.
4. Confirm the application type, because some routes are treated differently under the Order.
5. Check the authority's published validation checklist, since some list the fire statement explicitly and some rely on the Order.
6. Where the answer is yes, use the published form rather than a bespoke document, because a non-standard format is a validation risk.

A fire statement must be prepared by someone with the necessary fire-engineering competence. This is one of the report types where a qualified professional is legally required rather than merely advisable, and an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional and never a substitute for them. Reviewers who sign off documents of this kind can be approached through the professional directory.

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.