The Introduction of Residential Emergency Evacuation Plans (RPEEP)
London Fire Consultants Blog
The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 explained
The new Residential Evacuation Plans Regulations are now in force. For responsible persons, managing agents, housing providers, and building owners, this is not a minor update. It creates a clear legal duty to identify residents who may need help to evacuate and to put suitable arrangements in place.
The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 came into effect on 6 April 2026. Their purpose is to improve the fire safety and evacuation of residents in certain residential buildings in England who would have difficulty evacuating without assistance. That may include people with mobility impairments, sensory impairments, cognitive conditions, or other needs that affect self evacuation.
The Regulations also require building emergency evacuation planning in the relevant buildings. This means responsible persons now need a more structured, person centred approach. A generic stay put leaflet and a standard fire action notice will not be enough where a resident cannot safely self evacuate.
Which buildings do the Regulations apply to?
The Regulations apply to buildings containing two or more sets of domestic premises where either the building is at least 18 metres above ground level or has at least seven storeys, or the building is more than 11 metres in height above ground level and has a simultaneous evacuation strategy in place.
That scope matters. Some dutyholders will wrongly assume this applies only to the tallest high rise blocks. It does not. A building above 11 metres with simultaneous evacuation arrangements may also fall within scope. That is a compliance trap for managing agents who have not reviewed their evacuation strategy properly.
What responsible persons now need to do
The duties are more direct than many people expected. The responsible person must identify residents with mobility or other impairments who may need assistance to evacuate safely, create a person centred fire risk assessment to support their evacuation, produce a written Building Emergency Evacuation Statement for each relevant resident, and review the person centred assessment every 12 months or sooner if circumstances change.
This is where weak compliance approaches will fail. A superficial desk based exercise will not be enough. The phrase person centred matters. The responsible person needs to understand the resident’s actual needs, the building layout, the evacuation strategy, the available measures, and the realistic limits of any proposed arrangements.
There is also a practical management burden here. If the resident’s condition changes, if staffing arrangements change, or if the building changes, the arrangements may need review. This cannot be treated as a one off paperwork exercise.
What information must be recorded?
With the resident’s consent, the Building Emergency Evacuation Statement should include the floor number, flat number, number of people requiring assistance, a simple description of the help needed to evacuate, any equipment or measures that support or affect evacuation, and whether the resident has an Emergency Evacuation Statement.
That list looks simple. In practice, it is not. The challenge is not just recording information. The challenge is deciding whether the information is accurate, sufficient, current, and usable by responding crews in real conditions. Too much vague wording and the plan becomes meaningless. Too much complexity and it may fail under pressure.
What must be shared with the Fire and Rescue Service?
One area that will cause confusion is information sharing. Responsible persons have a duty to share basic fire safety information with the Fire and Rescue Service, but only with the resident’s clear and informed consent. The information must be sent digitally using the local process and stored in a Secure Information Box on site.
Full RPEEP documents should not be sent to the Fire and Rescue Service. Instead, key information must be available in the Secure Information Box so attending crews can access it during an emergency.
That distinction matters. Many dutyholders will be tempted to over share or under share. Both are mistakes. The legal and operational aim is to provide the minimum necessary information in a secure and usable way.
Consent and data protection are central
The data protection side is not an afterthought. Only the minimum necessary information should be shared. Responsible persons must explain the benefits and risks of sharing information, obtain explicit consent, explain that refusing consent does not stop the Fire and Rescue Service from rescuing someone, and allow residents to withdraw consent at any time.
This creates a real compliance tension. Responsible persons must gather enough information to support life safety, but they must also handle sensitive personal data lawfully and carefully. Poor scripts, unclear consent wording, or weak record keeping could create legal exposure as well as operational risk.
Common mistakes dutyholders are likely to make
- Assuming the rules only apply to very tall high rise buildings
- Treating the process as a form filling exercise rather than a person centred assessment
- Writing evacuation arrangements that depend on staff or resources that do not actually exist
- Confusing a personal evacuation arrangement with a change to the building’s overall evacuation strategy
- Holding outdated records and failing to review when the resident’s circumstances change
- Sharing personal data without clear and informed consent
- Assuming the Fire and Rescue Service will create, approve, or manage the plans on their behalf
The Fire and Rescue Service does not create, approve, or hold RPEEP documentation on behalf of responsible persons. That responsibility remains with the dutyholder.
Does an RPEEP change the building evacuation strategy?
Not automatically. An RPEEP does not automatically change the overall evacuation strategy for the building. It sets out personal arrangements for individual residents within the existing strategy, unless a change is required following suitable assessment.
That is a useful clarification, but it should not be misread. If the personal arrangements expose a deeper weakness in the existing strategy, the responsible person may still need to revisit the wider fire risk assessment, management arrangements, and physical measures. A broken strategy cannot be fixed by attaching a personal plan to it.
Enforcement risk is real
The Fire and Rescue Service may carry out spot checks of Secure Information Boxes as part of its fire safety activity. Where responsible persons are not meeting their legal duties, enforcement and prohibition powers may be used where necessary.
That means responsible persons should not wait for a complaint, an incident, or an audit letter. The safer approach is to review scope now, identify relevant residents, examine existing evacuation strategy assumptions, and put a defensible management system in place.
Why this matters now
These Regulations raise the standard expected of residential dutyholders. They push the sector away from generic assumptions and towards resident specific planning. That is the right direction, but it also exposes weak management systems very quickly.
If you are a responsible person, managing agent, housing association, or building owner, the key question is simple. Can you show that you have identified residents who may need help, assessed their needs properly, recorded suitable arrangements, reviewed them, handled consent lawfully, and made the right information available on site? If not, there is work to do.
Need support with RPEEP compliance?
London Fire Consultants supports responsible persons, managing agents, housing providers, and dutyholders with fire risk assessment, evacuation strategy review, residential fire safety advice, and practical support with compliance planning.