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Fire safety in lifts comes down to three overlapping legal areas: the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, LOLER 1998, and the Building Safety Act 2022. Together, these fire safety regulations affect any building with two or more domestic dwellings, from a converted Victorian block in Colchester to a new-build tower near the Thames.
These fire safety regulations discuss duties that fall on building owners and managers alike, covering everything from monthly routine checks to six monthly statutory inspections. They apply to both new and existing buildings, and getting them right is not optional for anyone responsible for a residential or commercial building.
At Future Lift Services, we support property managers, landlords, and facilities teams across Essex, London, and the wider South East with compliance focused maintenance, inspections, and lift servicing. If you manage a building with firefighting or evacuation lifts, this guide walks through what the law expects, who is accountable, and how often each check needs to happen.
What Are the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022?
From 23 January 2023, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 made it a legal requirement for the “responsible person” in high-rise residential buildings to carry out monthly checks of firefighting and evacuation lifts.
This was part of a wider overhaul of existing regulations following the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, which exposed serious gaps in how fire and rescue services could access lifts and key firefighting equipment during an emergency.
The Regulations sit alongside the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and both the Act and the Regulations impose duties on those in control of a residential building. These fire safety regulations pay particular attention to high-rise residential buildings (HRRBs), where the local fire and rescue service relies on functioning lifts and essential firefighting equipment during a response.
Under Regulation 7, the responsible person has four core duties:
- Undertake monthly routine checks of lifts used by firefighters, evacuation lifts, and other key firefighting equipment
- Take steps to rectify any faults identified during checks
- Notify the local fire and rescue service electronically if a relevant lift is out of service for more than 24 hours
- Keep an accessible record of checks for residents
A high-rise residential building is defined as one that:
- Contains two or more domestic premises, and
- Is at least 18 metres above ground level, or has at least seven storeys
Lower rise buildings don’t carry these specific monthly check duties, but the wider Fire Safety Order and LOLER responsibilities still apply regardless of a building’s height. Getting the HRRB classification wrong, or missing a monthly check, exposes the responsible person to enforcement action.
Who Counts as the “Responsible Person”?
The responsible person holds legal duty for lift fire safety compliance. In most cases, this is the building owner, freeholder, or managing agent acting on their behalf.
Whoever fits that description carries the obligation to maintain floor plans identifying every lift in the building, including whether it is for use by firefighters or classed as an evacuation lift. These floor plans, along with a plan showing key firefighting equipment, must be kept in a secure information box on site.
A building manager often handles the day-to-day work on the responsible person’s behalf, but the legal accountability itself cannot be delegated away.
Building Safety Act 2022 and Accountable Persons
For taller residential buildings, a second layer of duty sits alongside the Fire Safety Order. The Building Safety Act 2022 requires accountable persons, and one clearly identified principal accountable person, to assess and manage building safety risk for higher-risk buildings.
A higher-risk building under the Act is one that:
- Has at least seven storeys or is at least 18 metres high, and
- Contains at least two residential units, and
- Must be registered with the Building Safety Regulator before anyone lives there
Accountable persons must assess the chance of a building safety risk materialising, including risks connected to lift safety, and review that assessment at regular intervals. Failing to manage such a risk can expose both responsible persons and accountable persons to enforcement action, so most building owners treat the two sets of duties as one joined-up compliance programme rather than separate paperwork exercises.
What Happens If a Firefighting or Evacuation Lift Fails?
The 24-hour rule governs fault reporting to fire and rescue services once a firefighting or evacuation lift stops working correctly.
- Responsible persons must notify the local fire and rescue service electronically when a relevant lift is unavailable for more than 24 hours
- The responsible person must inform the service again once the fault has been fixed
- Records of the fault and the fix should be kept alongside the building’s monthly check records
LOLER 1998: The Inspection Backbone Behind Lift Safety
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER) require passenger-carrying lifts to undergo a thorough examination every six months by a competent person.
LOLER sits on top of the older Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER). PUWER covers work equipment generally, while LOLER adds lifting-specific duties, including the examination schedule below. Between them, these lift regulations cover the vast majority of lifts in residential and commercial buildings across Essex and London.
Non-compliance with LOLER used to carry a fine capped at £20,000 in the magistrates’ court, but that cap was removed in 2015. Fines are now unlimited.
Real enforcement cases have ranged from around £13,000 for documentary breaches to figures well into six figures where a lift failure caused serious harm. That’s a significant financial exposure for any building owner who lets inspections slip.
Inspection intervals under LOLER Regulation 9 are legal minimums, not suggestions an engineer can waive:
- Passenger lifts: thorough examination every 6 months
- Other lifting equipment, such as goods-only lifts: thorough examination every 12 months
LOLER Statutory Inspections vs Fire Safety Checks: What’s the Difference?
Building managers often mix up LOLER inspections with the monthly checks required under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, but the two serve different purposes and sit with different people.
| Requirement | LOLER 1998 | Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 |
| Frequency | Every 6 months | Monthly checks |
| Who performs it | Competent person (specialist) | Responsible person (non-specialist) |
| Applies to | All passenger lifts at work | Firefighting and evacuation lifts in HRRBs |
| Reporting duty | Certification and record-keeping | Report faults to fire and rescue service within 24 hours |
LOLER’s thorough examination is the technical, specialist inspection that underpins overall lift safety. The Fire Safety Regulations’ monthly checks are a simpler, in-house safety net that catches faults between those examinations.
Evacuation Lifts: BS9999 and BS9991 Standards Explained
Evacuation lifts are typically designed under BS9999 Annex G, or the newer BS9991:2024 for residential buildings. Unlike firefighters lifts, which the fire and rescue service takes over on arrival, evacuation lifts exist to assist evacuating occupants, particularly those who can’t use stairs, prior to and during an emergency.
Are evacuation lifts a legal requirement in the UK? There is no single blanket law demanding one in every building, but BS9991:2024 and the Building Regulations effectively make them essential for most modern residential developments with a passenger lift.
An evacuation lift generally needs:
- A fire-resistant lift shaft
- A protected lobby at each landing
- Emergency power systems, such as a generator or UPS system, so the lift keeps working if the mains supply fails during a fire
BS9991:2024 was never mandatory before but now sets clearer criteria than its predecessor, including one evacuation lift per escape stairway. The standard also expands scope to cover care homes and introduces firmer guidance on lift lobby protection, smoke control, and backup power supplies.
BS9991:2024 Criteria for Evacuation Lifts in Residential Buildings
The updated standard sets out specific, testable criteria for when and how evacuation lifts should be provided:
- At least one evacuation lift should be provided for each escape stairway
- Buildings with floors above 50 metres and a stay-put strategy should have every lift designed as a firefighters lift with evacuation capability
- Any lift provided for building escape should be classed as an evacuation lift
For developments across London specifically, there’s an added layer of planning guidance worth understanding before a project even reaches building control.
London Plan Guidance on Evacuation Lifts
The Greater London Authority recommends at least one evacuation lift per core for developments in the capital.
Specifically, the Greater London Authority states that in all developments with lifts, at least one lift per core should be a suitably sized fire evacuation lift. This applies in addition to Building Regulations firefighting lift requirements, not instead of them, so planning teams and building services engineers need to design for both from the outset.
Future Lift Services works across London developments, and our engineers regularly help clients understand how this policy interacts with their existing firefighting lift provision.
Firefighters’ Lifts: Design and Ongoing Maintenance Requirements
Firefighters’ lifts use specialised control systems that hand direct command to the fire and rescue service once they arrive on site, which is what separates them from a standard passenger lift.
Modern firefighters lifts commonly operate in two phases:
- Phase one triggers on fire alarm activation, automatically recalling the lift to the fire service access level and cancelling existing calls
- Phase two switches to firefighters supervised control, meaning only a trained and authorised person, typically a fire and rescue officer, can then move the car using the buttons inside it
This differs from an evacuation control system, which is designed to help move occupants out of a building in a safe and efficient manner rather than hand control to the fire service.
Firefighters’ lifts also typically include:
- A fire-resistant shaft, and in many cases a dedicated firefighting shaft with its own protected lobby
- An intercom or other dedicated communications system that stays operative throughout both phases
- Ancillary equipment such as fire alarm interfaces and dual power supplies, so the lift keeps working if the primary supply fails
Maintenance obligations for firefighters’ lifts come from both LOLER and the Fire Safety Regulations, and they layer on top of each other:
- Weekly: confirm the firefighter’s switch and any evacuation lift switch recall correctly
- Monthly: simulate a failure of the primary power supply, with any backup generator expected to energise the lift for at least an hour
- Every 6 months: LOLER thorough examination
- Annually: full performance test
Together, these checks keep the current firefighters lift setup ready for the moment it’s actually needed, backed by back up power supplies that many firefighting lifts rely on when the mains fails.
How Essex and London Building Managers Can Stay Compliant
Staying compliant comes down to a handful of practical, repeatable steps that any responsible person, accountable person, or managing agent can build into their annual calendar.
Future Lift Services supports compliance for Essex and London commercial and residential buildings through LOLER inspections, planned maintenance, and modernisation work that keeps ageing lift control systems up to current standards, on both new and existing buildings.
Here’s what we’d recommend building owners and managers check off:
- Schedule LOLER compliance thorough examinations every six months with a competent engineer
- Confirm whether the building qualifies as a high-rise residential building under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, or a higher-risk building under the Building Safety Act 2022
- Keep floor plans and lift check records accessible in the building’s secure information box
- Assess whether existing lifts meet BS9991:2024 evacuation lift criteria during modernisation planning
Each of these connects directly to services we already provide day to day, from routine LOLER statutory inspections to full lift modernisation projects for older equipment.
If your building’s evacuation strategy has changed, or you’re planning refurbishment work, it’s worth having a technical fault-finding visit early, before problems get baked into a wider project. Getting ahead of these checks tends to save both money and stress compared with reacting after an inspection flags an issue.
Closing Thoughts
Keeping on top of lift fire safety compliance protects residents, staff, and visitors. It also protects the responsible person and any accountable person from the kind of enforcement action that follows a missed check or an overdue inspection.
Whether you need a LOLER statutory inspection booked in, a technical visit to assess an existing firefighters’ lift, or advice on bringing an older evacuation lift up to BS9991:2024 standards, Future Lift Services’ engineers across Essex, London, and the South East are on hand to help.
Get in touch with our team to talk through what your building needs.
FAQs
What does the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require for lifts?
This fire safety regulation introduces a legal duty for responsible persons in high-rise residential buildings to carry out monthly checks on firefighting and evacuation lifts, and to report faults to the fire and rescue service within 24 hours.
How have technology and building design changed lift fire safety?
Modern firefighters’ lifts now use specialised two-phase control systems, dedicated communication lines, and dual power supplies. Advances in technology and building design also sit behind BS9991:2024, which sets clearer criteria for evacuation lifts in taller, more complex buildings.
Do older buildings need to meet the same lift fire safety standards as new ones?
Older buildings still fall under LOLER 1998 and, where they qualify, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022. They aren’t automatically required to retrofit BS9991:2024 evacuation lift features, but modernisation work is a good opportunity to bring them closer to current standards.ceptional circumstances, such as parts being on extended order from a manufacturer, the examiner may be able to advise on interim safety measures. This isn’t something to rely on though, and it’s always better to get repairs moving the moment a defect is confirmed rather than hoping for leeway later.