What Is a PEEP? Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans

A PEEP, or personal emergency evacuation plan, is a written plan for getting one specific person out of a building safely if there is a fire. Here is the part most guides skip: for most workplaces, no law actually uses the word “PEEP”. The legal duty under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is that the responsible person must make sure everyone on the premises, including disabled people, can escape safely, and that the evacuation plan works without waiting for the fire and rescue service to rescue anyone. A PEEP is simply the practical, recognised way of showing you have done that for people who would struggle to get out on their own.

At a glance: Nexis CPD’s £9 Fire Warden / Fire Marshal course covers the warden’s role in an evacuation, including assisting people who need help. Setting-specific courses for care homes, offices, schools and nurseries each cover PEEPs. They are CPD accredited and 100% online with a verifiable e-certificate, and any three courses cost £18. This is awareness training and general information, not legal advice or a regulated qualification.

What is a PEEP?

A personal emergency evacuation plan is a short document, agreed with the person it is for, that sets out how they will be alerted to a fire, which route they will take, what help or equipment they need, who will provide that help, and where they will end up. It exists because a standard fire procedure assumes everyone can hear the alarm, understand it, walk to the nearest exit and manage the stairs unaided. For some people one of those assumptions is false, and the PEEP fills the gap.

The term comes from government guidance rather than legislation. The Home Office guide Fire safety risk assessment: means of escape for disabled people, published under Article 50 of the Fire Safety Order, describes individual plans for employees and regular visitors, and standard plans for occasional visitors. It dates from 2007 and refers to the Disability Discrimination Act, since replaced by the Equality Act 2010, but its practical advice remains the main reference point in England.

Is a PEEP a legal requirement in the UK?

Not by name, for most premises, but the duty behind it is. In England and Wales the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 places duties on the “responsible person”, which in a workplace is the employer (Article 3). Several articles combine to require what a PEEP delivers:

Article 8 requires general fire precautions to keep employees safe, so far as is reasonably practicable, and to keep the premises safe for other “relevant persons”, meaning anyone lawfully there, including visitors and residents.
Article 9 requires a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, whose record must include “any group of persons identified by the assessment as being especially at risk”.
Article 14 requires that, in the event of danger, “it must be possible for persons to evacuate the premises as quickly and as safely as possible”. It says persons, not able-bodied persons.
Article 15 requires emergency procedures, including safety drills, and enough competent persons nominated to implement the evacuation.
Article 21 requires adequate safety training for employees, including those who will carry out an assisted evacuation.

The Equality Act 2010 adds a second layer. Section 20 sets out the duty to make reasonable adjustments where a practice, a physical feature or the lack of an auxiliary aid puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, and sections 39(5) and 29(7) apply it to employers and service providers. An evacuation procedure that works for everyone except wheelchair users is exactly that kind of disadvantage, and the government’s guide warns that failing to provide for disabled people’s safe evacuation “may be viewed as discrimination”.

So the law requires the outcome, and the PEEP is the evidence. The Fire Safety Order covers England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own fire safety legislation.

Can an employer rely on the fire and rescue service to evacuate disabled people?

No, and this is the point most often misunderstood. The means of escape guide states that the evacuation plan “should not rely upon the intervention of the Fire and Rescue Service to make it work”, and the government’s residential care guide says the same. The fire service is there to fight the fire and rescue people when something has gone wrong, not to collect the people your plan has left behind.

A common informal plan is “wheelchair users wait in the refuge on the stair landing and the fire brigade will collect them”. The guide is explicit that people “should never be left in a refuge point to wait for the Fire and Rescue Service”. A refuge is a protected place to pause or wait for trained colleagues, not the end of the plan. When the government introduced its rules for residential blocks in 2025, it described “workplace-style PEEPs” as plans intended to evacuate everyone before the fire and rescue service arrives, typically using on-site staff. That is the standard a workplace PEEP is measured against.

Who needs a PEEP?

Anyone who might not be able to get out quickly and safely using the normal procedure without help. That group is wider than wheelchair users, and wider than people who meet the Equality Act definition of disability. An evacuation requires noticing the alarm, understanding what to do, moving along the route and managing stairs and doors; anyone who may struggle with one of those may need a plan. That includes people with:

Mobility impairments, including wheelchair users, people with walking aids, and anyone who struggles with distance or stairs.
Sensory impairments, such as deaf people who may not hear an alarm when alone in a toilet or quiet room, and blind or partially sighted people who need guidance on an unfamiliar route.
Cognitive or neurodivergent conditions, including learning disabilities, dementia, and conditions that make a sudden alarm very distressing.
Breathing and heart conditions that make a long descent difficult.
Temporary conditions, such as a broken leg, recovery from surgery, or late pregnancy. A colleague on crutches for six weeks is just as unable to move quickly down a crowded stairwell as anyone else.

A young man using forearm crutches with his lower leg in a walking boot walking along a bright clear office corridor beside his line manager as they practise his route together — PEEPs are not only for permanent disabilities: a leg injury, recovery from surgery or late pregnancy can all make the normal escape route difficult.

Do not try to identify people by looking at them. Many impairments are invisible, and many disabled people manage the normal procedure perfectly well. Ask everyone, routinely and without singling anyone out: at induction, in periodic staff checks, when someone returns from sick leave or tells you they are pregnant, and at reception for visitors. Make clear that asking for a plan will not restrict anyone’s use of the building.

What is the difference between a PEEP and a GEEP?

A PEEP is written for a named individual you know about in advance, such as an employee, student or regular visitor. A general or generic emergency evacuation plan, or GEEP, is a set of ready-made options for people you cannot plan for individually, such as one-off visitors and members of the public. The government’s guide calls these “standard PEEPs” or standard plans.

The guide describes standard plans held at reception and offered at sign-in, with the visitor choosing the option that suits them. Where there is no controlled entrance, such as a shop or theatre, standard plans should still be in place and advertised, with staff trained to offer them during an incident. Visitors should always be offered a plan, but staff should not worry if someone declines, and plans should be offered discreetly so that people with less visible conditions, such as asthma or epilepsy, feel able to ask.

What should a PEEP include?

The detail varies with the person and the building, but most good PEEPs answer the same questions in plain language:

How the person will be alerted. If they may not hear the alarm: visual beacons, a vibrating pager linked to the fire alarm, or a named colleague who will tell them. Pagers need regular testing.
Where they are likely to be. Their usual desk or floor, plus places they regularly visit, such as a meeting room on another floor.
The escape route. The specific route and exit, and an alternative if it is blocked. Do not build the plan around an ordinary passenger lift. A lift only belongs in a PEEP if it is a designated evacuation lift, or its use has been specifically assessed as part of the building’s fire strategy, and the guidance notes that once the fire and rescue service arrives it takes control of the lifts.
Refuges. Which refuge, how the person will communicate from it, and who will come to it.
Equipment. For example an evacuation chair, where it is kept and who is trained to use it. The guide warns that evacuation chairs “should not be considered as an automatic solution” for wheelchair users, because not everyone can transfer into one or stay safely seated.
Assistance. Named helpers, plus named alternatives to cover leave, sickness and shifts.
Specific instructions. How the person prefers to be helped and anything a helper must not do. Nobody should attempt to carry someone down the stairs in their own wheelchair unless that method has been assessed and practised.
Training and review. Who has been trained, when the plan was last practised, and the next review date.

Two trained members of staff calmly guiding a woman strapped into a yellow tracked evacuation chair down an office stairwell during an evacuation practice, one staff member behind the chair and one walking below as a spotter — An evacuation chair only helps if trained operators practise with it regularly, and government guidance warns it is not an automatic solution for every wheelchair user.

Keep the plan practical: usually a page or two, with no need to name a diagnosis. A PEEP that records medical history in detail but does not say which stairwell the person uses, or who is trained on the evacuation chair, has the balance wrong. Store it securely, because it is personal information, but make sure everyone with a role in it, including the fire wardens for that floor, knows what it says.

How do you write a PEEP?

A plan written about someone, without them, is far more likely to fail. A practical sequence looks like this:

Identify who needs one. Ask all staff at induction and periodically, give them a confidential way to report changes, and set up standard plans for visitors.
Meet the person and listen. The government’s guidance recommends consulting disabled people about their escape. They usually know what works.
Walk the routes together. Check the actual stairs, door weights, thresholds, handrails, refuges and exits from the places the person uses.
Agree the alert, route and assistance. Decide how they will be warned, which route they will use, what equipment is needed and who will help.
Name the helpers, with cover. Nominate at least two trained people per role, so the plan survives holidays, sickness and shift changes.
Train the helpers. Anyone who will operate an evacuation chair needs practical training on that chair, and fire wardens need to know which PEEPs apply in their area.
Write it down and share it. Give the person a copy, brief the helpers and wardens, and link the plan to your fire risk assessment.
Practise it. Run it in a drill or separate practice, record what happened and fix what did not work.
Set a review date. Diarise the next review and list the changes that should trigger an earlier one.

The PEEP has to fit the building’s evacuation strategy, so if your fire risk assessment is out of date, start there. Our guide to the five steps of a fire risk assessment explains how the “identify people at risk” step feeds into this process.

How often should a PEEP be reviewed and practised?

The law sets no fixed review period for workplace PEEPs, but the Fire Safety Order requires the fire risk assessment to be reviewed regularly and whenever it may no longer be valid, and the PEEP should follow the same logic. In practice that means a routine review, often yearly, plus an immediate review when the person’s needs, their floor, the building layout, the evacuation strategy or the named helpers change. A helper leaving the organisation is one of the most common reasons a plan quietly stops working.

On practice, the means of escape guide says escape plans “should be practised on a regular basis and at least every six months”, that some systems such as pagers need more frequent testing, and that people with a learning difficulty may need to practise their routes monthly. Practice does not always mean a full carry-down: the guide suggests simulating carry-down to avoid unnecessary risk, with trained operators taking turns in the evacuation chair rather than the disabled person every time.

How do PEEPs work in care homes?

In an office, most people evacuate themselves and a few need a PEEP. In many care homes, most residents depend on staff. The government’s guide to fire safety risk assessment in residential care premises says that in almost all cases evacuation “will rely entirely on the action of staff”, which is why all staff, including agency and temporary staff, must be trained in the home’s procedures.

Care homes therefore rarely evacuate the whole building at once. The guidance describes progressive horizontal evacuation: residents are moved away from the fire, through a fire-resisting barrier, into an adjoining protected area on the same floor, where they can wait in safety or be moved further if needed. It also describes delayed evacuation for residents attached to medical equipment, where a suitably protected bedroom may be the safest place. Both depend on fire doors and compartmentation working as designed.

A care home manager and a carer sitting at a small round table in a homely care home lounge talking with an elderly resident about her safety plan, with her walking frame beside her armchair — In most care homes residents depend on staff to evacuate, and a resident’s PEEP may be built into their care plan so it is reviewed as their needs change.

Each resident still needs an individual assessment of how they will be moved and how many staff that takes, and the guide suggests a resident’s PEEP may need to be incorporated into their care plan. Two things are easy to get wrong. The plan must work with the staff actually on duty at night, and the guidance advises either holding a drill at night or simulating night-time conditions, including night staffing levels. And residents’ needs can change over short periods, so plans need reviewing far more often than an office PEEP.

What are the new residential PEEP rules for blocks of flats in England?

Some residential buildings in England now have a separate statutory regime. The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/797) were made on 3 July 2025 under Article 24 of the Fire Safety Order and came into force on 6 April 2026. They apply in England only and respond to recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 report.

They apply to a “specified residential building”: one with two or more sets of domestic premises that is at least 18 metres high, or has at least seven storeys, or is more than 11 metres high with a simultaneous evacuation strategy. 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 if they ask;
after discussion with the resident, implement reasonable and proportionate measures to reduce the risks, with rules on who pays;
use reasonable endeavours to agree an evacuation approach and, if agreed, record it in an “emergency evacuation statement” given to the resident;
review these at least every 12 months, and sooner if needed or the resident reasonably asks;
with the resident’s explicit consent only, give the local fire and rescue service basic information such as their flat and floor number and the help they may need; and
prepare a building emergency evacuation plan, give it to the fire and rescue service, and review it at least every 12 months.

These Residential PEEPs are deliberately different from workplace PEEPs. The government’s Residential PEEPs guidance explains that consultation responses showed substantial difficulties with mandating workplace-style PEEPs, which rely on on-site staff, in residential blocks. If you run an office or shop, these Regulations do not change your duties, which still come from the Fire Safety Order. If you manage a qualifying block of flats, they sit alongside existing duties such as the checks in our guide to fire door regulations.

What are the most common PEEP mistakes?

Most PEEP failures are not about the form but the gap between the paper and what would actually happen. The recurring patterns are:

The refuge as the destination. The plan ends with “wait for the fire brigade”, the one thing the guidance says should never happen.
Equipment nobody can use. The guide is blunt that an evacuation chair is unlikely to be of much use unless both user and operator are trained and familiar with it.
No link to the wardens. The warden sweeping the floor does not know a PEEP exists. Our article on how many fire wardens you need explains why people needing assistance should be part of that calculation.

For where PEEPs fit into the wider training duty, including what “adequate” training means under Article 21, see our guide to what UK law requires for fire safety training.

What training do fire wardens and staff need to support PEEPs?

Nexis CPD’s Fire Warden / Fire Marshal course covers the legal duties of the role, the warden’s day-to-day and emergency responsibilities, evacuation procedures and assisting people who need help. It pairs well with our Fire Safety in Care Homes course, which covers PEEPs and progressive horizontal evacuation where residents cannot evacuate on their own, and our Fire Safety Awareness course, which gives every member of staff a baseline in prevention, alarms and escape. Together they cover the people who lead an evacuation, the setting where assisted evacuation is the central skill, and the whole workforce, and you can take all three as a bundle. For other settings, our Fire Safety in Offices, Fire Safety in Schools and Fire Safety in Nurseries courses each cover PEEPs and can be swapped into the bundle.

£9 per course. CPD accredited, 100% online, verifiable e-certificate. Pay for 2, get 3 — any 3 courses for £18. These are CPD-accredited awareness courses, not Ofqual-regulated qualifications. They do not make anyone a competent fire risk assessor, and they do not replace hands-on training on your own evacuation equipment or practising your PEEPs in your own building.

Frequently asked questions

What does PEEP stand for?

PEEP stands for personal emergency evacuation plan: a written plan for a specific person who may not be able to evacuate a building quickly and safely without help, setting out how they will be alerted, their route, any equipment needed and who will assist them.

Is a PEEP a legal requirement?

For most workplaces the word PEEP does not appear in the law, but the duty behind it does. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to ensure everyone, including disabled people, can evacuate as quickly and safely as possible, and the Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments. In England, specified high-rise and higher-risk residential buildings have had separate statutory duties since 6 April 2026.

Who is responsible for writing a PEEP?

The responsible person under the Fire Safety Order, which in a workplace is the employer. The task is often delegated to a manager, HR or a fire warden, but the plan should always be agreed with the person it is for.

Can disabled people wait in a refuge for the fire brigade?

No. Government guidance says people should never be left in a refuge to wait for the fire and rescue service. A refuge is a protected place to pause or wait for trained colleagues, and the PEEP must set out how the person gets out without relying on the fire service.

What is a GEEP?

A GEEP is a general or generic emergency evacuation plan: a set of standard evacuation options for visitors and members of the public who cannot be planned for individually, usually offered at reception. Government guidance calls these standard PEEPs.

How often should a PEEP be reviewed?

There is no fixed legal interval for workplace PEEPs, but review them regularly, commonly yearly, and straight away if the person’s needs, location, helpers or the building change. Government guidance recommends practising escape plans at least every six months. Residential PEEPs under the 2025 Regulations must be reviewed at least every 12 months.

This article is general information about personal emergency evacuation plans and is not legal advice. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies in England and Wales, the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025 apply in England only, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate fire safety legislation. How the law applies depends on your premises and the people in them, so for a specific situation take advice from a competent fire risk assessor or your local fire and rescue service. Nexis CPD courses are CPD-accredited awareness training, not Ofqual-regulated qualifications, and they do not make anyone a competent fire risk assessor.

What Is a PEEP? Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans Explained