Residential PEEPs: A New Duty, and No Required Means of Escape
Since 6 April 2026 responsible persons must assess how residents who cannot evacuate unaided will get out. There is still no requirement to provide an evacuation lift at any height, and the government's own costed basket of measures tops out at a ramp.
INFIRISK Team·12 min read·
Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
On 6 April 2026 a new fire safety duty commenced in England. It requires responsible persons in high rise residential buildings to find out which of their residents cannot get out on their own, assess the risk to each of them individually, and write down what will happen in a fire.
Almost four months on, it is worth being precise about what that duty is, because a great deal of the commentary around it is wrong in both directions. Some of it overstates the obligation. Rather more of it assumes that a building with disabled residents must now be equipped to evacuate them, which is not what the law says at all.
What the Regulations actually are
The instrument is the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/797, made on 3 July 2025 and brought into force on 6 April 2026. They are made under article 24 of the Fire Safety Order, so they sit inside the existing Order rather than alongside it.
The guidance for responsible persons was published on 2 December 2025, four months before commencement. An Easy Read version was added on 5 April 2026, the day before the duty started.
The government's own account puts the Regulations against three Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 recommendations, 33.22.e and 33.22.f on personal emergency evacuation plans, and 33.22.c on building evacuation plans. They follow the Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing Plus consultation held in 2022.
Who is in scope, and who is not
Regulation 3 defines a specified residential building as one containing two or more sets of domestic premises which is either at least 18 metres in height, or has at least seven storeys, or is more than 11 metres in height and has a simultaneous evacuation strategy.
That third limb is the one people miss. A block of 12 metres running a stay put policy is outside these Regulations entirely. The same block, once it moves to simultaneous evacuation because remediation work is under way, comes into scope. The trigger is the strategy, not the height.
The impact assessment gives a sense of the populations involved. It assumes roughly 12,000 high rise residential buildings of 18 metres and over in England, containing about 691,000 dwellings, a figure taken from MHCLG's September 2023 building safety data. For the middle band it assumes only 531 buildings between 11 and 18 metres are running simultaneous evacuation, within a range of 425 to 637, and notes that this estimate relies entirely on responsible persons having reported accurately to their fire and rescue service.
Take that seriously if you are the responsible person for a mid rise block on an interim evacuation strategy. The government's working assumption is that there are a few hundred of you nationally. If your building is not among them, nobody has told the department it exists.
Regulation 4 defines a relevant resident as someone living in the building as their only or principal residence whose ability to evacuate without assistance in a fire is compromised as a result of a cognitive or physical impairment or condition. The guidance gives examples including a person who habitually needs a wheelchair, a blind person, a person unable to manage several flights of stairs, and a person with a learning disability or a cognitive condition such as dementia.
The five things you must actually do
Stripped to its structure, the duty is short.
Regulation 5. Use reasonable endeavours to identify relevant residents.
Regulation 6. Offer a person centred fire risk assessment to each one, and carry one out for anyone who asks.
Regulation 7. Implement mitigating measures that are reasonable and proportionate.
Regulation 8. Use reasonable endeavours to agree the approach to that resident's evacuation, and where it is agreed, record it in writing as an emergency evacuation statement and give the resident a copy.
Regulation 10. Give the local fire and rescue authority the flat number, the floor number, basic information about the degree of assistance needed, and whether a statement exists.
Regulation 9 then sets the review cycle. The assessment, the measures and the statement must be reviewed no later than 12 months after the statement was first recorded, and every 12 months after that, plus whenever there is reason to believe amendment is needed or the resident reasonably asks. Anyone who completed a first assessment in April 2026 has a review falling due in April 2027.
The duty most people have missed
Regulation 13 is separate from all of the above and applies to every specified residential building, whether or not anyone in it has a disability.
The responsible person must prepare a building emergency evacuation plan, give a copy to the local fire and rescue authority, and place a copy in the secure information box where the building has one. The plan must include the instructions to residents about the evacuation strategy already required by regulation 9(2)(b)(i) of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, confirmation as to whether or not there are relevant residents, and information about any other evacuation arrangements. It is reviewed on the same annual cycle.
Read regulation 13(2)(b) carefully. A building with no relevant residents at all still needs a plan, and that plan has to say so. "We have nobody in scope" is not a reason to have produced nothing. It is a thing you are required to write down and send to the fire authority.
There is no requirement for an evacuation lift. At any height.
This is the point that most needs stating plainly, because it is widely assumed to be otherwise.
Approved Document B, Volume 1, paragraph 3.29 begins "Where evacuation lifts are provided". It is conditional. It tells you how to build an evacuation shaft if you decide to have one, requiring the lift to sit within a shaft containing a protected stairway, an evacuation lift and an evacuation lift lobby, with the lobby providing a refuge area, direct access to a protected stairway, and no direct access from any flat, maisonette, storage room or electrical equipment room. It does not tell you to have one. That paragraph also sits under a marker recording it as part of the 2026 amendment, effective from 30 September 2026, so it is not yet in force even as guidance on how to build one.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 do not help either. Search the whole instrument and the words mobility, disability, vulnerable and person centred do not appear once. Those Regulations deal with evacuation lifts only in the sense of requiring monthly checks of any that exist, and requiring floor plans that identify them. They impose no duty to install one.
So the position after 6 April 2026 is that a responsible person has a legal duty to assess how a wheelchair user will leave a burning building, and no legal duty to provide the building with any means of getting them out. That is not a drafting oversight. It is the deliberate consequence of putting the duty on the operation of the building rather than on its construction.
What "reasonable and proportionate" is actually understood to mean
The impact assessment costed a basket of measures it expects to be taken following an assessment. It is worth seeing what is in it, at 2025/26 prices including a 10 per cent optimism bias.
In flat measures average out at £2,060 in total, made up of items including an evacuation chair at £963, a vibrating pillow and connector at £327, fire resistant doors at £341 plus £55 of labour, security and access systems at £180, a fire blanket at £44 and a smoke alarm at £35.
Out of flat measures average £1,950 per high rise building, made up of emergency signs, an LED exit box, lighting, grab rails and a ground floor ramp at £1,420.
There is no lift in the list. There is no structural work in the list. The most expensive single item the government expects a person centred assessment to produce is a ramp.
The guidance is explicit about the outer boundary. Paragraph 7.24 states that it is extremely unlikely to be reasonable and proportionate to take measures inside a flat that compromise compartmentation, to take common area measures with a negative impact on other residents or requiring excessive service charge increases, or for a responsible person to employ paid staff whose primary purpose is supporting evacuation, described in the guidance as a waking watch type arrangement.
Paragraph 7.16 confirms there is no requirement that a specialist carries out the assessment. Paragraph 7.13 confirms the resident does not have to share medical records.
And paragraphs 7.10 and 7.11 set out what is not yet covered. Future primary legislation is intended to require responsible persons to consider fire safety risks within the relevant resident's own flat as part of the assessment. That is not law yet. Responsible persons are recommended to do it now, subject to the resident agreeing, but the Fire Safety Order still stops at the front door.
Four places where the duty can end in nothing
This is where practitioners need to be careful, because the Regulations are conditional at almost every step.
Regulation 6 requires an offer. If the resident does not want an assessment and does not request one, there is no assessment.
Regulation 8 requires reasonable endeavours to agree an approach. Where no approach is agreed, no statement is recorded. Regulation 9(2)(d) then requires you to try again at review.
Regulation 7(3) removes the obligation to implement a resident funded measure unless the resident pays for it. Guidance paragraph 7.27(e) is blunt about what that means, that the resident has the right to decline to pay and the measure would not be implemented, and that there is no possibility of the resident being obliged to pay.
Regulation 10(2) prohibits sharing the information with the fire and rescue authority unless the resident has given explicit consent.
A responsible person can therefore discharge this duty in full, correctly and in good faith, and end up with a building where an unassisted wheelchair user lives on the eleventh floor, no measure has been installed, and the fire service has not been told. What the Regulations guarantee is a process, a conversation and a record. They do not guarantee an outcome.
That is not a criticism of the drafting, because the alternative is compelling disabled residents to accept measures and disclose conditions they would rather not. It is a warning against assuming that compliance and safety are now the same thing.
The money, and what the government thinks it buys
Total costs are centrally estimated at £508 million, made up of £203 million of set up costs and £304 million of ongoing costs over years two to ten. The central net present social value is £29.9 million.
The distribution matters more than the total. Household net present value is estimated at minus £192 million, with an equivalent annual net direct cost to households of £24.7 million, on the assumption that private sector responsible persons pass costs on where they can. Business net present value is a positive £478 million, which is the same money arriving as revenue at the firms selling the equipment. Social housing providers are assumed not to pass costs to renters, with the Residential PEEPs Social Housing Fund named in the guidance as the route for that sector.
The breakeven analysis is the most striking line in the document. For the benefits to exceed the costs, three fire related fatalities would need to be avoided per year over ten years, or alternatively 485 fire related casualties requiring hospital treatment.
How it is enforced
Fire and rescue authorities enforce these Regulations under the Fire Safety Order, and the guidance identifies the article 30 enforcement notice as the mechanism. For higher risk buildings, a failure may also amount to an Accountable Person failure under the Building Safety Act 2022, which residents can raise through the Residents Voice process.
The guidance also makes clear at paragraph 11.2 that neither the fire authority nor Residents Voice is there to arbitrate a dispute between a responsible person and a resident. Those go to the landlord's complaints process, an ombudsman, or the housing authority.
What to check this week
If you hold responsible person duties for a building of 18 metres or seven storeys, or a building over 11 metres running simultaneous evacuation:
Does a building emergency evacuation plan exist, has the fire and rescue authority got a copy, and does it state whether or not there are relevant residents? This one applies regardless of your resident profile.
Can you evidence the reasonable endeavours you used to identify relevant residents, rather than just the outcome?
For every assessment completed since April, is a review diarised for its own 12 month anniversary rather than for a single annual sweep?
Where a resident declined an assessment, declined a measure, or withheld consent to share information, is that decision recorded? It is your evidence that the duty was discharged.
Where a measure was ruled out as not reasonable and proportionate, does the file say why, against the tests in paragraph 7.24?
If your building has moved to or from simultaneous evacuation in the last year, has its scope status been reassessed?
The duty is young enough that nobody has been prosecuted under it. The first annual reviews fall due from April 2027, and that is the point at which a paper exercise and a real one start to look different.
