Schools evacuate well — the drill is practised, the staff are competent and the roll call works. The risk sits elsewhere: in the hours when the building is empty or let out, in the design and technology and science areas, in the temporary classrooms nobody assessed when they arrived, and in the small number of pupils and staff for whom the standard drill was never going to work. We assess nurseries, primary and secondary schools, academies, sixth forms and colleges.
Deliberate ignition is a leading cause of school fires, and most of it starts outside the building. The perimeter is part of the assessment, not an afterthought.
Lettings, clubs, holiday schemes and community use put people in your building who never attended your drill.
A dated, recorded assessment with a prioritised action plan that a governing body or trust can actually act on and evidence.
Most schools could evacuate the main building in under three minutes and have the records to prove it. That is genuinely valuable, and it is also why the assessment needs to concentrate on everything the drill does not cover.
Escape routes, capacity and final exits across the whole site · Compartmentation and fire doors, including corridors used as teaching space · Detection and alarm coverage and audibility over classroom noise · Science, DT, art, kilns and food technology · Chemical and flammables storage · Kitchen and extraction · Boiler and plant rooms · Temporary and modular buildings · External arson risk: bins, storage, perimeter, flat roofs · PEEPs for pupils and staff · Letting and out-of-hours arrangements · Drill, training and testing records.
The site visit covers the teaching areas, the specialist rooms, the plant and — importantly — the outside of the building.
Route widths against occupancy, final exits that open, and assembly points that work in the weather you actually get.
Condition and closer function, hold-open devices, and corridors that have quietly become storage or breakout space.
Gas taps and isolation, dust extraction, hot work, kilns, and how flammables are stored and how much of them there is.
Bin positions and securing, combustible storage against walls, perimeter security, accessible flat roofs and lighting.
Assessed as buildings in their own right, with their own escape routes, detection and heating — not as an annexe on a plan.
Pupils and staff who need a personal plan, including those for whom the alarm sound itself is the difficulty.
Recurring across primaries, secondaries and colleges regardless of size or age of building.
The single most common and most consequential external finding, and among the cheapest to resolve.
Ventilation, supervision and sheer traffic. The fix is hold-open devices linked to the alarm, and we specify where.
Trolleys, display stands and equipment on protected routes, accumulating quietly across a term.
A hall let three evenings a week with no briefing, no named person and nothing in the agreement about evacuation.
Non-compliance with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is a criminal offence carrying unlimited fines and, in serious cases, up to two years’ imprisonment, and the Responsible Person is the employer — the trust, the governing body or the local authority. Beyond enforcement, the operational consequence is severe and well documented: a serious school fire displaces pupils for months, destroys coursework and records, and costs far more in disruption than in rebuilding. Most of the ignition risk that causes it is external and inexpensive to remove.
Property type, rough size, number of storeys and what it is used for is enough for us to quote. Survey within days, and your written report within 48 hours of the visit.