Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing consultation – our response

The Home Office has been consulting on proposals to support people who wouldn’t be able to evacuate independently from their building in the event of an emergency. This consultation follows previous consultations on the same topic, conducted initially in 2020 and then again in 2021.  

The latest government proposals would require Responsible Persons in buildings with a simultaneous evacuation strategy to provide residents with an opportunity to self-identify as needing support. Under the proposals, the Responsible Person would then be required to work with the Fire and Rescue Service to conduct a Person-Centred Fire Risk Assessment to help identify any risks to the resident in their flat and any barriers to evacuation, then consider any reasonable mitigation measures. The government also proposes that relevant information be shared with the Fire and Rescue Service, who would use it to inform their approach in the event of an emergency in the building. 

The safety of residents is a top priority for housing associations and so we welcome the opportunity to respond to the government’s latest proposals. We’re grateful to our members who provided insights and feedback to inform our sector response.  

Summary of our response 

Disabled and mobility-impaired residents should feel and be safe in their homes, and no resident should be discriminated against when it comes to their personal safety. We therefore disagree that the government’s proposals provide an adequate approach to support people who otherwise couldn’t evacuate independently, given that buildings with simultaneous evacuation strategies have been identified as having a known building safety risk that requires residents to leave in an emergency.  

In our submission, we set out our view that: 

• Disabled and mobility-impaired residents in buildings with a simultaneous evacuation strategy should be offered reasonable adjustments to support them to evacuate, which may include a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP). 
• Responsible Persons for buildings with a stay put evacuation strategy should also be required to provide disabled and mobility-impaired residents with an opportunity to identify if they’d need support in the event they’d have to evacuate, and make reasonable adjustments to support them. 
• While we believe that this is the right approach to ensure that disabled and mobility-impaired residents are fairly treated, we recognise that implementing such an approach may be a complex and large task. 
• We therefore propose a risk-based roll-out of our proposed approach to include the broader set of buildings we think requirements should extend to and call for clear, unambiguous guidance to support Responsible Persons, together with government funding to ensure that disabled people and people on lower incomes do not have to pay for reasonable mitigations to their homes. 
• We also highlight the need for any requirement that is related to disabled residents to be developed alongside them. 

Next steps 

The consultation closed on 21 August. It is not currently clear when we can expect the government’s response, but the NHF will keep members updated. In the meantime, if you’d like any further information on the proposals or our submission, please get in touch.