I think you may be taking too narrow a view of the term "disabled". If you know they may be incapable of responding to a a fire alarm then a PEEP should be created. They should be aware of the content of the PEEP and agree to the actions in the PEEP such as entering their room, if they fail to respond to the fire alarm.

Hi Hannah - This is a difficult situation to address meaningfully as the clientele are generally less involved in compliance and rule following anyway; and their likely mental and physical ability to respond to an emergency should be considered in relation to their known character. 2 questions that you should ask yourself here:- First - are you considering individual accomodation units such as individual flats or are you considering a "hostel"? From your post; that looks most likely! If you're considering a "hostel" situation where you, as landlord, retain a right of access to all areas; then it becomes somewhat different in that you should now consider the foreseeable probable lack of responsiveness of your occupants and create structural and alarm conditions that do not rely on the clients in any safety-critical way. Your FA should be sufficiently well "zoned" so that any actuation can be immediately narrowed down to no more than 3-4 rooms at worst and you should have sufficient staff to safely investigate an alarm [including entering individual rooms] without reducing the remainder of your emergency evacuation process to an unsustainable level. You will need to enter rooms to ensure that:- 1 - whether the room is empty - it's not a secure establishment is it?; 2 - that any occupant present is capable of responding; 3 - that any occupant not obviously capable of responding is clearly identified and left where they are [you're not trained to retrieve people to a place of safety - and yes I do know what levels of training are generally provided to address the unresponsive client in these situations!] closing the door as you leave to inform the FS of the rooms that require the most urgent attention. Second, who is actually the "Responsible Person" for the premises? If you have flats within a purpose-built HMO [normally a HAT or other social housing organisation], then it will be the Landlord who has the responsibility for Building Control & FSO compliance. Your client will have had to be made properly aware of the conditions of their tenancy, the degree of supervision that will be applied, and the consequences of failing to maintain those compliance conditions. Hope that helps - if you need more feel free to PM me. Frank Hallett

we have in place PEEP's for anyone that has a disability, that includes hearing problems learning disiabilities so responding to loud noises etc, the problem I am having is with those customers who a re known drug and alcohol users. For example we have a wet hostel in which homeless alcohol and substance users live there are times of the day where they are absolutely fine and would be able to evacuate with everyone else, then there are other parts of the day where they may be intoxicated, passed out & not hear or respond to the alarm. These are the people I am concerned about and where our liability as an organisation and service provider stands in evacuating these people, do we have an obligation to get them out or to a place of refuse like those on PEEP's or as they are able to evacuate under normal circumstances do they go down as unaccounted for if they do not show at the assembly point, and those rooms are made priority to the fire brigade? Thanks Hannah

A place of refuge is a safe place where people can wait until the rush of people have made their exit and they can then be evacuated safely. This prevents people who are moving slowly because they have a problem holding up people trying to get out or being pushed over by them and falling. It is not a place to hold people until the Fire Brigade arrive, they only enter the building in an emergency if people are trapped, they do not go in to get people from a refuge

If we are now going to consider provision of refuges, we need to consider that there is no mention of anything similar to the concept of a "refuge" in the FSO. Therefore, I would suggest that jonpsych has got it just about right with his most recent post here; both for "refuges" in general and the evac of persons who may not be able to respond as well as others. Having said that, I still firmly believe that, for this particular example, the structure and alarm system must be designed, installed and maintained with the high liklihood of poor to nil ability to respond by the occupants; and an accompanying site-specific Fire Response System to cater for the variabilities of differing locations and occupancy/tenancy. Frank Hallett

Hysterical paralysis for example. We consider it in our PEEPs policy