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Fire-safety and evacuation planning for an intergenerational care building must be based on the people who use the building, its layout and fire protections, and the staff available on every shift—not on a single assumed occupant profile. Assess each person’s ability to understand a warning and move to safety, then choose and rehearse a strategy the building and staffing can actually support. “Intergenerational care building” is a useful description, not a standard legal occupancy category; local classification and requirements must be confirmed for the specific site.
What does “intergenerational care building” mean for fire planning?
It describes a building serving people from different age groups, possibly across different care settings. It does not, by itself, tell you which building regulations, fire-safety duties, care-licensing requirements or evacuation provisions apply. Before design or operational planning, establish the building’s actual uses, occupant groups, jurisdiction, occupancy classification and the authorities responsible for building control, fire safety and care oversight.
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That distinction matters because a mixed-age population is not a single risk category. A child may not recognize an alarm or follow directions without help; an older person may have limited mobility, cognition or stamina; another resident may move independently but need supervision. Visitors and staff also need to be accounted for. Planning around an “average resident” can conceal the specific help, time, equipment and staff skills needed by particular people.
The source guidance is jurisdiction-specific. Ireland’s Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) handbook addresses residents and children in designated centres. Scotland’s practical guidance applies to existing care homes and notes that occupant needs vary, with settings such as children’s homes and dementia care potentially requiring a risk-based approach. A 2025 England study considers specialised housing and care homes; its recommendations are not government policy. These sources offer useful planning principles, but they are not one interchangeable code. Confirm the current rules for the site before relying on any particular design or operational measure.
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How should individual evacuation needs be assessed?
Assess each person’s likely response to an alarm, ability to move and need for help before admission where possible, and reassess when their needs or circumstances change. HIQA recommends considering support needs, evacuation equipment, bedroom location, changes to fire precautions and the number of appropriately trained staff needed to evacuate people within a safe evacuation time.
A practical personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) should give staff usable information, not just record a diagnosis. Consider documenting:
- whether the person recognizes and understands the warning and can follow instructions;
- whether they can leave the building independently, and what assistance or supervision they need;
- the movement method or aid required, including any relevant transfer needs;
- the staff roles, number of helpers and skills needed by day and night;
- where the person should move first, how they will continue toward safety, and who supervises them after evacuation; and
- the plan’s review date and the events that should prompt an earlier review.
Keep plans accessible to the staff who may need them and organize them in a way that supports action, such as by fire compartment. Review them after changes to a person’s mobility or cognition, bedroom location, care arrangements, building use, procedures or staff skill mix. HIQA’s Fire Safety Handbook recommends considering evacuation needs before admission and allocating bedrooms with those needs in mind. Where feasible, a person with higher dependency may be placed in a lower-risk or easier-to-evacuate location, but that decision must fit the building’s overall strategy and local requirements.
Individual plans and the building fire-risk assessment serve related but different purposes. A PEEP tells staff what support a particular person needs; it does not establish that routes, alarms, compartmentation, staffing or the overall strategy are adequate. The plans must work together: the building arrangement has to accommodate the people expected to use it, and the staffing model has to deliver the assistance specified.
Should the building evacuate everyone at once or use progressive evacuation?
Neither approach is automatically right for every care building. The choice should reflect occupant dependency, the staff available to act, and the building’s layout and construction, including whether fire and smoke can be contained well enough to support movement in stages.
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| Approach | What it means | Key planning question |
|---|---|---|
| Immediate evacuation | The plan calls for the whole building to be evacuated after a fire is discovered and a warning is given. | Can the people who need help be moved promptly with the staff, routes and equipment available at the time of the incident? |
| Progressive evacuation | People at greatest risk are moved in a controlled sequence through fire doors to another sub-compartment or lower-risk area, and then farther toward ultimate safety as needed. | Can the building limit fire and smoke spread, provide early warning and allow staff to move people safely through the planned stages? |
These descriptions follow Scotland’s guidance for existing care homes; they are not a universal prescription. That guidance says progressive evacuation for high-dependency residents depends on suitable measures to restrict fire and smoke, provide early warning and support staff action. It also notes that the measures in place can limit which residents a part of a building can safely accommodate. A staged strategy is not simply a decision to keep people in place: the sequence, destinations, staff actions and conditions for moving farther toward safety need to be explicit.
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How many staff are needed to evacuate residents at night?
There is no single staffing number that can safely be applied to every building. The care-home manager should document that the staffing available on each shift—including the minimum or night complement—can carry out the chosen strategy, given the dependency of residents, the tasks involved and the time available.
Start with individual plans and map their assistance requirements onto the evacuation sequence. Check whether staff can respond to the alarm, assist the people who need help, use required aids, supervise children or residents who may need direction, and continue to monitor people already moved to a place of relative safety. Consider the staff’s training and competence as well as headcount; a role that depends on a particular skill cannot be assigned as if all staff were interchangeable.
Scotland’s guidance specifically calls for considering the number of staff needed to move residents safely and the time and effort required for people with varying dependency, including at night. HIQA likewise recommends assessing the number of appropriately trained, experienced and skilled staff needed to evacuate residents within a safe time. If the plan only works with day staffing, it is not a complete plan for a building occupied overnight.
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Assign responsibilities clearly. Staff should know who raises the alarm or initiates procedures, who assists which people, who checks relevant areas where safe and assigned, and who accounts for people after movement. Scottish guidance says staff carry out the planned evacuation, while the fire and rescue service tackles the fire and rescues residents if the predefined strategy has failed. Attribute that division of roles to the Scottish guidance; it should not be presented as a universal legal rule for every jurisdiction or incident.
How can you tell whether escape routes and equipment will work?
Check the complete route from each relevant location to safety, including the way a person will move with the aid specified in their plan. A route that is clear for a walking adult may not work for a bed-bound resident, a wheelchair user, a child needing an escort or an evacuation aid that must negotiate turns or doors.
HIQA describes means of escape as the physical route or routes from a point in a building to a place of safety. Its handbook says routes should be protected from fire and smoke and kept clear; a suitable escape means should be available for each resident or child at all times, and an alternative route should usually be available if one route is blocked. During design review and routine checks, consider:
- route number, width and travel distances within compartments;
- doors, thresholds, corners, ramps, handrails and stairs along the entire path;
- the bed spaces and people served by each route, and the movement method required for each;
- whether the equipment can be brought to the person, used in the available space and moved through each part of the route; and
- what happens if the preferred route is unavailable, consistent with the building’s fire strategy.
HIQA recounts that an L-shaped ramp and handrail arrangement at the Quakers Hill nursing-home fire did not accommodate bed-bound residents and hindered evacuation. The practical lesson is to assess route geometry and the actual movement task, not merely to confirm that a ramp or exit exists. If beds or other equipment must be moved, check their turning space and compatibility against the full route rather than assuming the narrowest or most visible section is the only constraint.
Possible aids include wheelchairs, ski sheets and hoists; some sites may need stair-compatible evacuation aids. A ski sheet is a rugged mat that secures an evacuee and is pulled along the ground to safety. These are examples, not blanket recommendations. Select aids according to individual needs, transfer method, route arrangement, staff competence and the planned procedure. Provide enough of the right equipment, keep it maintained and accessible, store it where it can be reached when needed, and train staff in the aids they may have to use. An aid that is unavailable, unsuitable for the route or unfamiliar to staff is not an operational solution.
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How should evacuation drills test the plan?
Use drills to find out whether the procedures work under realistic staffing and equipment conditions, then document and correct problems. An alarm activation or arrival at an assembly area alone does not establish that a care building can evacuate safely; that conclusion follows from the objectives and reporting requirements HIQA sets out for centre-specific drills.
HIQA recommends tailoring drills to the centre and conducting them across shifts, including conditions that test the minimum staff who may be on duty. Set a defined objective: for example, whether staffing is adequate, whether assigned procedures are followed, whether aids and routes work, or whether movement occurs within the safe evacuation time. Use an observer to review the exercise. Resident and child participation should be decided with their mobility, health, capability and welfare in mind; use simulated participants where appropriate rather than treating participation as a test in itself.
Record enough to support follow-up: scenario, date and time, safe and actual evacuation times, people or simulated people evacuated, participating staff, aids used, problems encountered, lessons and recommended corrective actions. Assign responsibility for the changes, update plans or procedures as needed, and retest material failures. A drill that exposes a blocked route, unclear role or unsuitable aid is useful only if the finding leads to a safer arrangement.
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Two published figures illustrate why plans and assumptions deserve scrutiny, but neither is a current estimate for all care settings. A 2008 study of nursing-home evacuation plans reported that only 31% of the plans it studied specified an evacuation route. That finding concerns the plans in that study, not the present-day performance of all care buildings.
A 2007 Tokyo group-home study concerning older residents with dementia reported that 17% were considered able to evacuate independently. The result belongs to that study’s population and setting; it should not be generalized to all older people, all people with dementia or mixed-age care buildings. The nursing-home evacuation plans study record and the Japanese group-home study record provide the relevant study context.
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The England Building Safety Regulator’s 2025 research reviews specialised housing and care-home types and relevant fire-safety provisions. Its report identifies a lack of available evidence directly establishing the effectiveness of measures in specialised housing types designed under the referenced English regulations and guidance. That is an evidence gap reported for the review’s scope—not evidence that measures are effective or ineffective everywhere. The GOV.UK page also states that the report’s findings and recommendations do not represent government policy. No statistic in the cited material directly compares evacuation outcomes in buildings specifically described as intergenerational care buildings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an intergenerational care building a legal occupancy classification?
The cited guidance does not establish it as a standard legal category. The building’s actual uses, occupants and care arrangements must be classified under the relevant local building, fire-safety and care rules.
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Does a personal evacuation plan replace a building fire-risk assessment?
No. A personal plan records the help a person needs; the building assessment and fire strategy must address whether routes, protection measures, staffing and procedures can deliver that help safely.
Can an evacuation mat be used on stairs?
The cited guidance describes ski sheets as mats pulled along the ground and does not establish that any one mat is suitable for stairs. The aid, route and transfer method must be assessed together, and staff need training in the equipment specified for their site.
Are the England research recommendations current government policy?
No. The 2025 GOV.UK publication says its findings and recommendations do not represent government policy. It should be read as research within its stated scope, not as a substitute for current local requirements.
