Sleeping residents who cannot self-evacuate. Everything about the strategy follows from that.
A care home or supported-living scheme is assessed around residents who cannot evacuate themselves: the strategy is progressive horizontal evacuation between fire compartments, with night staffing, fire doors and detection matched to it. The provider is the responsible person under the Fire Safety Order, and Care Inspectorate Wales will ask for the recorded assessment, the action plan and evidence that the actions have been done.
A generic assessment written for an office and reused in a care home is worse than none, because it gives false comfort about the one thing that matters: whether the people on shift can move the people in the building.
Where the fire-resisting walls and doors are, whether they are continuous above the ceiling, and how many residents sit in each compartment.
The number of staff on at night has to be enough to carry out the strategy the building supports. If it is not, either the staffing changes or the building does.
Self-closing, fire-rated, and closing. Held open on an acoustically linked or alarm-linked release if they need to stand open for care reasons, never on a wedge.
Emollient creams on bedding are a well-documented and lethal one. Charging equipment, mobility scooters and smoking arrangements are the others.
Where they charge, what the room is made of, and whether that room is on the escape route. This is now one of the most common findings in supported living.
Written for a member of staff at three in the morning, not for a committee. If it takes more than a page to explain, it will not be followed.
These sit in an awkward gap. A supported living scheme may be a set of individual tenancies, which makes the flats private dwellings, while the corridors, communal lounge and staff areas are firmly in scope. The evacuation strategy has to work for people with real support needs, but you cannot rely on the compartmentation standards a registered care home would have.
Getting that boundary right, and saying plainly what the building can and cannot support, is most of the value of the assessment.
Sleeping residents who cannot self-evacuate. That single fact changes the strategy from get everyone out to move people horizontally into a protected compartment and hold them there. Everything else follows from it, including compartment sizes, door specifications and staffing at night.
Moving residents sideways through a fire door into an adjoining compartment on the same floor, rather than down a staircase. It is the standard approach in care premises because it is achievable with the staff actually on duty at three in the morning, and it depends completely on the compartment walls and doors doing their job.
There is no single number. It is whatever it takes to move the residents you actually have, in the compartments you actually have, in the time the construction gives you. That calculation belongs in the assessment, and it is the question a fire officer will ask first.
You need to know what each resident needs to get to safety. In a care setting that is often held as a dependency or mobility profile rather than a separate document per person, but it has to be current and it has to be available to the staff on shift, not filed in an office.
The recorded assessment, the action plan and evidence that the actions have been done, plus the alarm and emergency lighting test records and your evacuation strategy. They will also ask when it was last reviewed and what changed as a result.
Where private dwellings and communal areas meet.
The element the whole strategy depends on.
Care settings change more often than most buildings, and so should the assessment.
Tell us the building and we will give you a price on the phone. Most assessments are booked within the week.