Emergency lighting – your questions answered
Every commercial building is different; and in the event of an emergency, each one will have different requirements to reduce the risks of injury or even loss of life.
If you’re a business owner or a landlord, being legally responsible for your building’s fire safety – and by extension, the health and safety of your staff, guests and/or tenants – can feel like a lot of pressure.
You not only have to understand the risks and your own personal duties to safety, but also need to translate them into a safety equipment setup that can match the individual needs of your premises and the people using them.
That’s why we’re presenting this brief guide to one of the more overlooked aspects of fire safety and building security; emergency lighting.
What is it? Why do you need it? And what are your legal duties for providing emergency lighting systems? Let’s dive in…
What is emergency lighting?
When a power cut strikes – either due to a general power outage or as a result of an ongoing emergency, such as a building fire – emergency lighting automatically works to keep your building illuminated and enable safe evacuation of the building’s occupants.
Most emergency lighting ‘luminaires’ – the technical name for a single lighting unit – are powered via a battery during a power cut situation. This battery is charged via your mains supply, and may be self-contained within the lighting unit or located centrally to deliver power to all your emergency lights at once.
Meanwhile, standby lighting (which we’ll cover shortly) is typically powered via a backup generator unit.
Emergency lighting can be ‘maintained’ (where the light remains on at all times whether there’s a power cut or not) or ‘non-maintained’ (where the light switches on when a power cut occurs).
Since emergency lighting is a requirement for all commercial buildings, most existing commercial premises will already have emergency lighting installed. However, your current emergency lighting system may not be up to spec if it was installed a long time ago, or if your building is being used for a different purpose than the one it was built for.
What are the categories of emergency lighting?
Emergency lighting generally falls into two categories:
- Emergency escape lighting: designed to help facilitate safe evacuation
- Standby lighting: designed to enable regular operations to continue during a power cut
Standby lighting is not legally required, although it can be vital for certain building types; such as hospitals and airports.
Emergency escape lighting is also divided into three sub-categories; escape route lighting, open area lighting and high risk task area lighting. We’ll explain each of these in more detail below.
What is escape route lighting?
Escape route lighting both identifies and illuminates safe routes out of your building. This not only includes emergency exit sign units, but also bulkhead lamp units placed along the exit route.
What is open area emergency lighting?
Also known as ‘anti-panic lighting’, open area lighting enables building occupants to calmly reach a location where an escape route can be identified.
Open air lighting is typically required in areas with more than 60m2 of floor space. Smaller spaces may also require open air lighting if the space’s layout or use presents additional hazards to escape.
What is high-risk task area emergency lighting?
For building occupants engaged in dangerous processes or surrounded by dangerous equipment, high-risk task area lighting provides the necessary light for carrying out safe shut-down procedures and avoiding hazards while escaping.
High-risk task area lighting is not only important for preventing potential injury or death during an evacuation, but also for preventing further emergency situations that might arise from abandoning equipment; such as a fire in a commercial kitchen or an overload in a power station.
What is stairwell emergency lighting?
Stairwell lighting technically falls under standard escape route lighting. However, since they provide a crucial escape route for multi-storey structures, emergency lighting for stairwells generally require brighter and more extensive lighting.
Is emergency escape lighting a legal requirement in the UK?
Yes.
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, all non-domestic buildings in England and Wales must provide sufficient emergency escape lighting to BS 5266 standards. Emergency escape lighting is also a legal requirement for common areas in flats and other multi-storey and HMO residential dwellings.
Regular emergency lighting maintenance and testing is also a legal requirement; providing assurance that your emergency lights will perform correctly in an emergency scenario. We’ll cover testing in more detail shortly.
As for Scotland and Northern Ireland, emergency escape lighting is required under the Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006 and the Fire Safety Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2010 respectively.
However, depending on the size, purpose and typical hours of use of your building – plus the presence of any ‘borrowed light’ from windows – your building may already have sufficient emergency escape lighting without the need for additional luminaire units.
You should always consult a safety assessor if you’re not sure whether your current lighting meets the required regulations.
Who is responsible for installing and/or maintaining emergency lighting?
For all fire safety requirements listed in the Fire Safety Order 2005 (including emergency lighting), the responsibility for implementing them falls on the ‘responsible person’ (RP).
Some situations may have multiple responsible persons. In these cases, all individuals must work together to ensure the entire premises are protected.
For commercial buildings, the responsible person is typically the employer which operates their business from within the premises. The building’s owner and anyone else who has control of the building may also be considered responsible persons.
For multi-storey residential properties and HMOs, the responsibility for installing and maintaining emergency lights usually falls on the landlord. Letting agents may also share some of the responsibility.
Can I delegate responsibility for emergency lighting to a third party?
In most cases, you can leave the work of designing, installing and maintaining emergency lighting to a qualified professional.
This third-party engineer will need to be knowledgeable in Fire Safety Order 2005 and BS 5266 standards, and any electrical work they provide will need to meet BS 7671 standards for electrical wiring. It’s ultimately your responsibility to check if your engineer is qualified for the job.
What are the consequences for ignoring emergency lighting regulations?
Don’t underestimate the importance of installing and/or maintaining emergency lighting. Without adequate escape lighting, you’re essentially putting you, your team and any customers that visit your site – or your tenants if you’re a landlord – in serious danger if an emergency situation should happen.
Those who fail to provide adequate emergency lighting (and/or any other fire safety provisions) can face an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison.
Where do I need to place emergency lighting within my building?
The exact emergency lighting setup requirements for your business will depend on the size, layout and purpose of your building.
You should always start by carrying out a fire risk assessment. From there, your fire risk assessor can help you design an emergency lighting system setup that can meet the required regulations.
How long do emergency lights need to stay on?
Once emergency lights switch on via battery power in a power cut situation, the duration of time that they can remain powered on has major implications for the safe evacuation and reoccupation of your building.
Different building types and layouts will have different minimum emergency light duration requirements between 1 hour and 3 hours.
However, emergency lighting that lasts 3 hours has become the de facto standard for all commercial premises. It’s the safest option in an emergency scenario; not only providing more time to evacuate, but also avoiding confusion for building occupants and potentially enabling faster reoccupation once the emergency is over.
Keep in mind, your emergency light system’s batteries will need time to recharge once power is restored to the building. If you’re using 1-hour emergency lights, you’ll need to wait until the batteries are fully charged before you can reoccupy the building.
How often should I test my emergency lighting?
For most businesses, you’ll need to carry out a brief test once every month and a longer test once every year.
The annual emergency lighting test checks your entire emergency lighting system for the full duration it’s designed to operate for. If your lights are designed to last for 3 hours, but run out of power before the 3 hours are up, they’ll need to be repaired or replaced as soon as possible.
You can also purchase self-testing emergency lights which carry out their own monthly and annual tests automatically. However, no matter whether each test is carried out manually or automatically, the results of each test will still need to be manually logged.
Certain businesses may need to carry out tests on their emergency lights more often than others. If in doubt, it’s always best to speak to an emergency lighting testing expert.
JC Electrical UK Ltd offer professional emergency lighting installation and testing in London via our team of qualified electrical contractors. Find out more on our emergency lighting page; or to discuss your escape lighting requirements, call us on 0208 839 9561 or email info@jcelectric.co.uk today.
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