What is a PEEP? Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans explained
An evacuation plan that assumes everyone can walk quickly down the stairs isn't a plan for everyone. A PEEP — Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan — is the bespoke plan for the people that assumption leaves behind: anyone who can't get out unaided.
Who needs one
A PEEP is for any person whose ability to evacuate safely may be reduced. That's broader than most people assume:
- Mobility — wheelchair users, or anyone who can't manage stairs quickly.
- Sensory — people who can't hear a standard alarm, or can't see standard signage.
- Cognitive — conditions that make it hard to recognise an alarm or follow a route under stress.
- Temporary — a broken leg, late pregnancy, a day-surgery recovery. PEEPs aren't only for permanent conditions.
What goes in a PEEP
A good PEEP is specific and practical — written with the person, not about them:
- Awareness — how they'll know there's an emergency (e.g. a vibrating pager or visual alarm if they can't hear the sounder).
- Route — the exact way out that works for them, including which exits and stairs.
- Assistance — who helps, and how. This might be a nominated "buddy," a team trained on an evacuation chair, or staff who know the drill.
- Equipment — evacuation chair, ski-sheet, or similar, and where it's kept.
- Refuge — if a stairs-first descent isn't immediate, a protected refuge point where the person can wait safely in contact with those managing the evacuation.
- Communication — how they call for and confirm help.
- Training & review — everyone named in the plan is trained and has practised it, and the plan is reviewed when things change.
Lifts are not part of an ordinary evacuation unless they are a designated evacuation lift or firefighting lift. A standard passenger lift must never be used to escape a fire.
The law behind it
Two duties meet here. Article 15 of the Fire Safety Order requires the responsible person to establish evacuation procedures and to nominate competent people to help with evacuation — which is exactly what assisted evacuation is. Separately, the Equality Act 2010 frames a PEEP as a reasonable adjustment, so that a disabled person isn't put at a substantial disadvantage in getting out. BS 9999 sets out the practical side — refuges, evacuation lifts and assisted-evacuation planning.
A PEEP is personal — named individual, known needs — and suits workplaces and schools where you know who's in the building. A GEEP (General Emergency Evacuation Plan) is a standardised approach for visitors and members of the public you can't plan for individually. Many buildings need both.
Why it's the hardest part of any drill
Getting able-bodied people out is usually the easy bit. The person who can't self-evacuate is the one who forces the real decisions: who moves first, which route stays protected, and how you buy time by holding the fire back. Plan for them first, and the rest of the evacuation tends to look after itself.
Practise this in the game
The PEEP Builder drill matches evacuation plans to people's needs — and the Fire Spread simulation makes you get a resident who can't self-evacuate out alive.
Play Hazard Hunt →This guide is for learning and applies to England & Wales. Guidance on evacuation for residents of high-rise residential buildings continues to develop — always work from current regulations and your own fire risk assessment; Scotland and Northern Ireland have equivalent regimes.