Lesson 6 of 7Safety and the law
Fire safety duties for lifts.
Fire safety law rarely mentions lifts by name, but it still reaches them: through the fire risk assessment, the duty to keep fire safety equipment working and, in taller blocks of flats, through checks and plans that name lifts directly. This lesson sets out the duties that apply in England.
Why fire safety law reaches lifts.
Fire safety law in England rarely mentions lifts by name. It still applies to them, because lifts affect how a fire spreads and how people get out of a building.
- The lift shaft runs through every floor it serves. Its walls and landing doors help to stop fire and smoke spreading from floor to floor.
- Many lifts are designed to stop being used when a fire is detected. A signal from the fire alarm sends them to the main exit floor, where they shut down. This is called fire recall.
- Firefighting lifts and evacuation lifts are the exceptions. They are built and protected to keep working in a fire, for firefighters or for the people running the evacuation.
So the duties that matter most for lifts are the general ones: assess the fire risks, keep fire safety features working and plan how people will get out. In taller blocks of flats, a few duties also name lifts directly.
Our lesson on firefighting and evacuation lifts explains how those lifts work and the monthly checks they need. This lesson covers the wider duties around them.
Where this applies
This lesson covers England. The Fire Safety Order also applies in Wales, but the regulations and the Building Safety Act rules described here apply in England only. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate fire safety laws.
The Fire Safety Order.
The main fire safety law for buildings in England and Wales is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, usually called the Fire Safety Order. It applies to almost all premises except private homes, including offices, shops, hotels and the shared parts of blocks of flats.
The Fire Safety Act 2021 amended the Order to state what it covers in a building with two or more sets of domestic premises: the structure, the external walls, any common parts and all doors between the flats and the common parts. A shared lift is normally part of the common parts.
The duties fall on the responsible person. For a workplace, that is the employer, if the workplace is under their control to any extent. For other premises, it is the person who controls them in connection with a business or other undertaking, whether or not for profit, or otherwise the owner. In a block of flats, it is usually the freeholder or landlord, or a management company or right to manage company that controls the common parts.
The fire risk assessment
The responsible person must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to people from fire, to identify the fire precautions they need to take. This is the fire risk assessment. It must be reviewed regularly to keep it up to date, and in particular when there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid or there has been a significant change. Each assessment and review must be recorded, including its findings and the measures taken or planned.
Keeping fire safety features working
Where it is needed to keep people safe, the responsible person must make sure that the premises, and the facilities, equipment and devices provided for fire safety, are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and kept in efficient working order and good repair. A separate article sets the same duty for anything provided for firefighters.
The law
“Where necessary in order to safeguard the safety of fire-fighters in the event of a fire, the responsible person must ensure that the premises and any facilities, equipment and devices provided in respect of the premises for the use by or protection of fire-fighters … are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.”
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 38(1)
A firefighting lift is one of those facilities. Failing to meet these duties is a criminal offence where the failure puts one or more people at risk of death or serious injury in case of fire. That applies to the responsible person and to anyone else who shares the duties.
Lifts in the fire risk assessment.
The Order does not list what a fire risk assessment must say about lifts. In our experience, a good assessment answers these questions:
- What each lift is for fire purposes: a firefighting lift, an evacuation lift or a passenger lift that should not be used in a fire
- What each lift does when the fire alarm sounds, and whether that has been tested
- Whether the evacuation strategy relies on any lift, and how that is managed
- What condition the lift shafts, the landing doors and any protected lobbies are in
- How faults in a lift’s fire features are recorded, reported and put right
Telling the kinds of lift apart is specialist work. LEIA, the lift industry’s trade association, says it should be done only by competent lift personnel. Ask your lift maintenance provider to confirm what each lift is and how it is set up, and give the answer to whoever carries out your fire risk assessment.
When to review it
The Order requires a review when there is reason to suspect the assessment is no longer valid or there has been a significant change. For lifts, that can include a modernisation, a new fire alarm system or a change to the building’s evacuation strategy. The Home Office adds that when a fault is found on a lift for use by firefighters or an evacuation lift, the responsible person should consider whether the fire risk assessment needs updating.
The lift shaft and its doors
For new buildings, Approved Document B, the fire safety guidance in England, says that a lift well connecting different fire compartments of a building should form a protected shaft, enclosed with fire-resisting construction. Openings in the enclosure should be limited to a short list, such as fire doorsets and pipes that meet its provisions and, where the shaft contains a lift, the passage of lift cables into a lift machine room.
Lift landing doors have their own fire test. Approved Document B says they are tested from the landing side only, and refers to BS EN 81-58 for them. Unlike other fire doors, they do not need ‘Fire door keep shut’ signs, and LEIA notes that they do not count as fire doors for the fire door checks in blocks of flats, covered below.
So damage to a lift shaft or a landing door is a fire safety matter as well as a lift fault. If holes are made in the shaft walls, for example for new cables, or a landing door is damaged, tell your lift maintenance provider and whoever carries out your fire risk assessment.
Safety first
Never open a landing door with a release key or go near an open lift shaft. Keep people away and call your lift maintenance provider.
Maintaining and examining a lift’s fire features.
The 2022 regulations, covered below, added monthly checks for some lifts. The Home Office’s fact sheet on them is clear that maintenance was already a duty.
Home Office guidance
“All lifts including secondary or back up power supplies as well as any other fire-fighting equipment should already be subject to a suitable programme of maintenance and inspection.”
Home Office, fact sheet on regulation 7 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022
For lifts used by firefighters and evacuation lifts, LEIA summarises the recommendations of BS 8899, the code of practice for improving the fire-fighting and evacuation provisions of existing lifts:
- The responsible person and the lift maintenance contractor should agree a suitable programme of maintenance for the lift
- The responsible person should make sure that equipment which is not part of the lift is also maintained, and examined and tested where necessary: secondary power supplies and changeover equipment, any pit drainage pumps, fire-fighting or evacuation communication systems, automatic recall devices, external indicators and labelling
- All the lift’s fire-fighting and evacuation features and functions should be thoroughly examined periodically, separately from maintenance and not by the maintenance company
- The lift should be thoroughly examined again after a significant modification
LEIA also confirms that a lift’s operation in a fire is part of its thorough examination. Where the competent person cannot check it as part of the examination, they should call for supplementary tests, for example of fire recall or of operation on a secondary power supply. The owner should arrange tests of the equipment that is not part of the lift too, and co-ordinate them with the lift’s supplementary tests. Our lesson on supplementary tests and load testing explains how those tests are requested and carried out.
Extra duties for blocks of flats.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, made under the Fire Safety Order, added duties for the responsible person in blocks of flats from 23 January 2023. Which ones apply depends on the building’s height.
Describe this diagram
A block of flats is divided into three bands. In any block of flats, the responsible person needs a fire risk assessment, must display fire safety instructions and must give residents information about fire doors. Above 11 m, they must also check fire doors and, if everyone is to leave at once in a fire, prepare evacuation plans. In a block at least 18 m high or with at least seven storeys, they must also check firefighting and evacuation lifts every month, keep floor plans showing every lift, mark floor numbers in the lift lobbies, install a secure information box and prepare evacuation plans, and the Building Safety Act’s rules for higher-risk buildings apply. Each band adds to the duties of the bands below it.
| Duty | Which blocks | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Display fire safety instructions, including the evacuation strategy and how to report a fire, and give residents a copy when they move in and every year | Any block with two or more flats and shared areas that residents would use to escape | Regulation 9 |
| Tell residents to keep fire doors shut, not to tamper with the self-closers and to report faults, when they move in and every year | The same blocks | Regulation 10 |
| Check fire doors in the shared areas at least every 3 months, and use best endeavours to check flat entrance doors at least once a year | Blocks above 11 m | Regulation 10 |
| Install a secure information box for the fire and rescue service, and inspect it at least once a year | High-rise blocks: at least 18 m or seven storeys | Regulation 4 |
| Record the design and materials of the external walls | High-rise blocks | Regulation 5 |
| Keep floor plans showing every lift, and a single-page building plan, in the box, and send them to the fire and rescue service electronically | High-rise blocks | Regulations 6 and 11 |
| Check lifts for use by firefighters, evacuation lifts and essential fire-fighting equipment every month, and report faults not fixed within 24 hours | High-rise blocks | Regulation 7 |
| Mark floor and flat numbers on every stair landing and in the lift lobbies | High-rise blocks | Regulation 8 |
The duties that name lifts
Three of these duties name lifts. In the regulations, a lift for use by firefighters is any lift in a firefighting shaft, and any passenger lift with a switch that lets the fire and rescue service take control of it.
- The floor plans must, together, show the location of every lift and identify any lift for use by firefighters and any evacuation lift. The single-page building plan must show the location of any firefighting shaft. Hard copies go in the secure information box, and the plans must be updated as soon as reasonably practicable after any change to the layout or to the location of key fire-fighting equipment.
- Lifts for use by firefighters and evacuation lifts must be checked every month, and the responsible person must take steps to put right any fault. A fault that cannot be fixed within 24 hours must be reported to the local fire and rescue authority electronically, and reported again once it is fixed. The checks must be recorded, and the record made accessible to residents.
- Floor numbers and flat numbers must be marked on each landing within the stairways and in the lift lobbies, designed and located as Approved Document B describes, so that they can be seen in low lighting or by torchlight.
Our lesson on firefighting and evacuation lifts explains the monthly checks step by step, including who can carry them out.
The Home Office says faults in other passenger lifts, which have no switch for firefighters and cannot be used as evacuation lifts, do not have to be reported to the fire and rescue service. They still need reporting to your lift maintenance provider and putting right.
Higher-risk buildings.
The Building Safety Act 2022 adds another layer for higher-risk buildings: buildings in England at least 18 metres high or with at least 7 storeys that contain at least 2 residential units. The principal accountable person commits an offence if one is occupied without being registered with the Building Safety Regulator.
Each accountable person for an occupied higher-risk building must, for the part of the building they are responsible for:
- Assess the building safety risks: the risks to people from the spread of fire and from structural failure
- Assess them again at regular intervals, whenever they suspect the current assessment is no longer valid, and when the regulator directs
- Take all reasonable steps, promptly, to prevent those risks materialising and to reduce the severity of any incident if they do
- Make arrangements to plan, organise, control, monitor and review those steps
The principal accountable person must then prepare a safety case report, containing those assessments and a brief description of the steps taken, and revise it when further assessments or steps make that necessary or appropriate.
The Act does not mention lifts. In our view, the assessments and the safety case should still cover them where they bear on fire safety: the lift shafts that link the floors, the landing doors, and any firefighting or evacuation lift that firefighters or the evacuation plans would rely on. The fire risk assessment and the lift records are the natural sources.
The responsible person under the Fire Safety Order and the accountable persons under the Act may be the same organisation or different ones. Where they are different, the responsible person must co-operate with each accountable person so that they can carry out their duties under the Act.
Evacuation plans for residents who need help.
Since 6 April 2026, the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 have required responsible persons to plan for residents who would need help to evacuate in a fire. They apply to blocks of flats at least 18 m high or with at least seven storeys, and to blocks above 11 m with a simultaneous evacuation strategy, where the responsible person has decided that everyone should leave straight away in a fire.
The responsible person must:
- Use reasonable endeavours to identify residents whose ability to evacuate without help is compromised by a cognitive or physical impairment or condition
- Offer each of them a person-centred fire risk assessment, and carry one out for anyone who asks
- After discussion with the resident, put in place the measures that are reasonable and proportionate to reduce the risks, some of them only if the resident pays for them
- Try to agree with the resident how they will evacuate in a fire, and record it in an emergency evacuation statement, with a copy for the resident
- Review the assessment, the measures and the statement at least once a year, and sooner if they may need changing or the resident reasonably asks
- With the resident’s explicit consent, give the fire and rescue service their flat and floor numbers, the help they may need and whether they have a statement
- Prepare a building emergency evacuation plan, give a copy to the fire and rescue service, put a copy in any secure information box and review it at least once a year
The regulations do not mention lifts. An ordinary passenger lift is not built or protected to keep working in a fire, and many are designed to stop when the fire alarm sounds, so it should not be part of anyone’s evacuation plan. If your building has an evacuation lift, or a firefighting lift that the plans may use, ask your fire risk assessor how the plans should use it, and make sure the lift is checked and maintained for that job.
Safety first
In a fire, use the stairs unless your personal or building evacuation plan says otherwise, and follow the directions of building staff and the fire and rescue service.
A fire safety checklist for your lifts.
For a building manager, the duties come down to a few practical steps.
Know your lifts
Find out what each lift is for fire purposes and what it does when the fire alarm sounds. Your lift maintenance provider can confirm it.
Check the fire risk assessment
Make sure it covers the lifts, the shafts and the landing doors, and that it was reviewed after any modernisation or change to the fire alarm or the evacuation strategy.
Keep the fire features maintained
Ask your maintenance provider how fire recall, any firefighting or evacuation controls and any back-up power supply are checked, make sure the thorough examination covers them, and keep the records.
Treat faults as fire safety issues
Report damage to a shaft or a landing door, and any fault in a lift’s fire features, straight away. In a high-rise block, report faults on lifts for use by firefighters and evacuation lifts that are not fixed within 24 hours to the fire and rescue service.
Keep the plans current
In a high-rise block, keep the floor plans, the monthly check records and the evacuation plans up to date, and make sure residents have the fire safety instructions.
Work with the other duty holders
Share information with any other responsible persons, the accountable persons and your contractors, and pass the fire safety records on if the building changes hands.
Our health and safety page sets out how we work, including checking that car returns, overrides and signage fit the building’s fire strategy and plans. If we maintain your lifts, we can confirm what each lift does in a fire and explain what your monthly checks should cover.
Check your understanding.
Three quick questions on this lesson. Choose an answer to check it, or open the answer below each question.
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Under the Fire Safety Order, who is the responsible person for a workplace?
Show the answer
B. The employer, if the workplace is under their control to any extent. Article 3 makes the employer the responsible person for a workplace they control to any extent. For other premises, it is the person in control in connection with a business or other undertaking, or otherwise the owner.
-
In a high-rise block of flats in England, what must the floor plans in the secure information box show about lifts?
Show the answer
C. The location of every lift, and whether each is a lift for use by firefighters or an evacuation lift. Regulation 6 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 requires the floor plans, together, to show the location of all lifts and identify any lift for use by firefighters and any evacuation lift.
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A lift company has a contract to maintain the lifts in an office block. What does the Fire Safety Order say about it?
Show the answer
A. It is treated as having control of the premises to the extent of its contract, so it shares the duties for matters within its control. Article 5 treats anyone with a contract or tenancy obligation to maintain or repair premises, including anything in them, as having control to that extent. The responsible person keeps their own duties.
Sources.
The primary sources for this lesson. We checked them when the lesson was last updated on 18 October 2026. How we research and check our lessons.
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Want your lifts checked against your fire strategy?
We can check how each lift responds when the fire alarm sounds, check overrides and signage against your building plans, and explain what your monthly checks should cover.
Common questions.
Quick answers to common questions about this topic.
Does the Fire Safety Order apply to lifts?
Yes, as part of the premises. The Order does not name lifts, but the responsible person must assess the fire risks, including in the shared parts of blocks of flats, and keep fire safety facilities, equipment and devices in efficient working order and good repair. Facilities for firefighters, such as a firefighting lift, have their own maintenance duty in article 38.
Who is responsible for fire safety in a block of flats with lifts?
The responsible person under the Fire Safety Order: usually the freeholder or landlord, or a management company or right to manage company that controls the common parts. Anyone else with control to some extent, including a contractor with a maintenance contract, shares the duties for matters within their control. A higher-risk building also has accountable persons under the Building Safety Act 2022.
What do the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require for lifts?
In high-rise residential buildings, at least 18 m high or with at least seven storeys, the responsible person must check lifts for use by firefighters and evacuation lifts every month, report any fault not fixed within 24 hours to the fire and rescue service, show every lift on the floor plans kept in the secure information box and mark floor numbers in the lift lobbies. Other duties, such as fire safety instructions for residents, apply to lower blocks of flats too.
Do I have to tell the fire service when a lift breaks down?
In a high-rise residential building in England, yes, if the fault is on a lift for use by firefighters or an evacuation lift and it cannot be fixed within 24 hours. Report it electronically to the local fire and rescue authority, and report again once it is fixed. The Home Office says faults in other passenger lifts do not have to be reported to the fire and rescue service.
Do residential evacuation plans involve lifts?
The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 do not mention lifts. They require the responsible person in taller blocks of flats to identify residents who need help to evacuate, offer them a person-centred fire risk assessment, try to agree an emergency evacuation statement and prepare a building emergency evacuation plan. If your building has an evacuation lift, ask your fire risk assessor how the plans should use it.