Hi, First posting on the Forum! I know this has come up loads of times before but presumably all old postings have gone? Advice please - Employee with mobility issues working on first floor of multi-storey office building. Decline in condition means that using the evac chair & buddy scheme we had in place is no longer feasible as the lower limb will not flex sufficiently to get the chair down the stairs. We have therefore moved the employee to the ground floor. Long term however, the employee is remote from her colleagues and can only now undertake some of the previous admin support role. How do other organisations deal with evacuating employees with mobility issues from upper floors? Thanks every so.

I attended a presentation today by our local fire and rescue service, and their advice was to establish a safe haven as suggested but they also stated that if you do you would need to have in place a communications link in order that they could contact persons in these area remotely.

Y- notwithstanding any of the above; I lost a friend to MS a few years ago. She had the same sort of issue to deal with in terms of mobility and reasonable adjustment. I would just say that the person should be involved in the descision so that they (hopefully) can appreciate what the employer must do for them. This should be done carefully (HR issue) but insistingly as the employee may have internal denial wrt their capability and, if relevant their potential decline. If it is debilitating and progressive perhaps larger but fewer steps in making arrangements would be better. At the end of the day it will come down to capability and suitable deployment in work (perhaps of a different nature). At some point people may hae to face the inevitable 'change' in work which is never going to be easy. Finally you may need to consider other practicalities as well as evacuation; location of disabled toilet, coffee/ rest, etc area is going to need more frequent attention than evacuation. Car parking may also be worthwhile thinking of, and these things might offset some change resistance and illustrate fulfiling the doc. I use a temorary/ permenant disability assessment set of q's as part of an interview RA process which might be useful to do in this instance. Good luck Steve

I think if you read the question - "How do other organisations deal with evacuating employees with mobility issues from upper floors?" you will see that yroyal is looking for real examples of procedures that others have in place, not ideas from people who do not know the actual set up or the individual. Shaun you are exactly right about the unpredictability of fire, further the behaviour of people involved in a fire situation is also unpredictable.