On completion, learners will be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

• The purpose of fire safety and prevention planning
• The legal framework, including the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
• The fire triangle and the causes of workplace fires
• The fire risk assessment as the basis of the plan
• Fire prevention measures and good housekeeping
• The control of ignition sources and flammable materials
• Fire detection, warning and suppression systems
• The development of an emergency evacuation plan
• The testing, drilling and review of plans
• Record-keeping and continuous improvement

• Evacuation planning saves people; continuity planning saves organisations. Most fire training covers only the first.
• Businesses fail after fires for avoidable reasons. Records, systems and stock were all in one building.
• A plan nobody has read is not a plan. Length and inaccessibility are the two most common defects.
• Evacuation strategy is a design decision. The wrong strategy for the building produces a failed evacuation.
• Plans go out of date silently. People leave, layouts change and nobody revisits the document.
• The first twenty-four hours shape everything after. Communication and decisions in that period determine recovery.

• Level 2 qualification for those writing and maintaining fire plans
• Delivered entirely online through the Britsafe learning management system (LMS) no physical classroom attendance is required
• Course materials are provided digitally (soft copy) via the LMS
• Assessed via an online examination through the Britsafe Examination Management System (EMS), with a minimum pass mark of 70%
• Certification issued with an anti-counterfeit hologram security seal, available both as a physical copy and as a soft (digital) copy
• Covers planning as a discipline rather than fire safety generally
• Gives business continuity and recovery equal weight to evacuation
• Explains evacuation strategies and how they are selected
• Addresses out-of-hours, lone working and unusual scenarios
• Available fully online to learners in the UK and internationally

Knowledge developed:

• Legal requirements for arrangements and emergency planning
• Emergency plan content, usability and accessibility
• Evacuation strategies, assisted evacuation and unusual scenarios
• Prevention programmes, maintenance scheduling and drill design
• Salvage, recovery, continuity, insurance and communication

Skills developed:

• Writing a plan short and clear enough to be followed
• Selecting an evacuation strategy appropriate to the building
• Planning for people who need assistance in advance
• Designing drills that test something rather than confirm a time
• Identifying what the organisation cannot operate without
• Reviewing and updating plans when circumstances change

This Award is designed for those with planning responsibilities, including:

• Those writing or maintaining fire emergency plans
• Facilities, premises and estates managers
• Health and safety coordinators and advisers
• Business continuity and resilience personnel
• Site, store and operations managers
• Care home, school and hospitality managers
• Building and property managers
• Event and venue managers
• Small business owners
• Charity and voluntary sector managers
• Those supporting the responsible person
• Those preparing for fire risk assessment training

No prior qualification is required.

There are no formal academic prerequisites for this Level 2 Award. It is open to learners aged 16 and above with a reasonable standard of spoken and written English, sufficient to engage with course materials and complete the assessment. No prior fire safety qualification is assumed.

Course content is structured around progressive learning blocks covering legal requirements for arrangements and planning; the relationship between assessment and plan; emergency plan content; usability and accessibility; evacuation strategies; simultaneous, phased and progressive horizontal evacuation; selecting a strategy; assisted evacuation, refuges and personal plans; out-of-hours, night shift and lone working scenarios; visitors, contractors and the public; the planned prevention programme; inspection and maintenance scheduling; drill design, variation and evaluation; communication, briefing and induction; roles and responsibilities; fire and rescue service liaison; salvage priorities and site security; business continuity planning; critical functions, records and equipment; off-site backup, alternative premises and suppliers; insurance considerations; post-incident communication; and review and testing.

Assessment is conducted through an online examination via the Britsafe Examination Management System (EMS). Learners must achieve a minimum score of 70% to pass. On successful completion, learners receive a certificate, available both as a physical copy and as a soft (digital) copy. Results and certificates are typically issued promptly following successful completion.

This Level 2 Award supports roles including:

• Facilities, Premises or Estates Manager
• Health and Safety Coordinator or Adviser
• Business Continuity or Resilience Assistant
• Site, Store or Operations Manager
• Event or Venue Manager
• Small Business Owner
• A stepping stone toward fire risk assessment and business continuity qualifications

Property and facilities management

• Manufacturing and production
• Warehousing, logistics and distribution
• Retail, hospitality and leisure
• Health and social care
• Education and childcare
• Public sector and local government
• Charities and the voluntary sector
• Events, venues and visitor attractions
• Professional and financial services
• Any organisation occupying non-domestic premises

• Produces emergency plans that people can actually follow
• Ensures the evacuation strategy suits the building rather than defaulting
• Addresses out-of-hours and lone working scenarios most plans omit
• Improves drill design so that drills reveal problems rather than confirm times
• Supports continuity planning, which materially affects survival after a fire
• Identifies critical records and equipment before rather than after a loss
• Clarifies who communicates with staff, customers and media in the first hours
• Provides documented evidence of planning capability for insurers and auditors

• A recognised, portable credential covering a genuinely distinct skill
• Understanding of why organisations fail after fires they survived
• Flexible online delivery that fits around working patterns
• Practical ability to write a plan that will be used
• Knowledge spanning fire safety and business continuity
• A foundation for continuity and fire risk assessment qualifications

Learners can apply this qualification directly to:

• Writing a fire emergency plan short enough that people read it
• Keeping a copy of the plan accessible from outside the building
• Naming roles rather than individuals so the plan survives staff changes
• Selecting an evacuation strategy appropriate to the building’s design
• Preparing personal evacuation plans in advance rather than at the point of need
• Planning for night shifts, weekends, lone workers and cleaning staff
• Scheduling inspections, servicing and testing across the year
• Designing drills that vary the scenario, time and blocked route
• Identifying records and systems the organisation cannot function without
• Keeping backups and copies off-site or in the cloud
• Identifying alternative premises and suppliers before they are needed
• Establishing who communicates with whom in the first twenty-four hours
• Reviewing the plan after changes to layout, staffing or operations

This Award is best positioned as planning-level knowledge. Learners often progress into:

• Britsafe Level 2 Award in the Principles of Fire Safety
• Britsafe Level 2 Award in Fire Safety and Fire Warden Training
• Britsafe Level 1 Award in Emergency Response Planning for Major Accidents
• Fire risk assessment training
• Business continuity management qualifications
• Britsafe Level 2 Award in Managing Safely
• Level 3 fire safety qualifications

• Business continuity and organisational resilience roles
• Fire risk assessor pathways
• Facilities and estates management development
• Emergency planning and crisis management
• Professional membership routes with relevant fire, safety and continuity bodies

Britsafe Qualifications UK Limited delivers this qualification fully online, making it accessible to learners across the UK and internationally without the need to attend a physical training centre. Evacuation principles, planning methodology and business continuity practice are applied internationally, and continuity management is addressed in international standards. Legal duties, evacuation requirements, insurance arrangements and reporting obligations are national, so learners working outside Great Britain should confirm the framework applicable locally.

1. What does this qualification cover?
It covers fire safety planning: the emergency plan and its content, evacuation strategies, assisted evacuation, out-of-hours scenarios, the planned prevention programme, maintenance scheduling, drill design, communication, salvage and site security, business continuity, insurance considerations and review.

2. How does it differ from the other Britsafe fire qualifications?
By subject. The Level 1 Awareness Award serves the workforce; the Fire Warden Award covers the appointed evacuation role; the Principles of Fire Safety Award covers the building and its systems; the Fire Safety for Managers Award covers operational decisions. This Award covers the documents and arrangements themselves how plans are written, how strategies are chosen, how drills are designed, and what happens after a fire. The recovery and continuity content is not covered anywhere else.

3. Why does business continuity feature in a fire qualification?
Because surviving the fire and surviving as an organisation are different achievements. Evacuation planning succeeds regularly people get out. What frequently does not survive is the business, and the reasons are usually avoidable: records held in one place, no off-site backup, specialist equipment with long replacement lead times, no alternative premises identified, staff who cannot be paid, and customers who found another supplier within a fortnight. A substantial proportion of businesses suffering a major fire never fully recover, and the difference is generally what was planned beforehand.

4. What must a fire emergency plan contain?
The action to take on discovering a fire, how the alarm is raised and how the fire service is called, evacuation arrangements including the strategy in use, escape routes and assembly points, arrangements for people needing assistance, the duties of wardens and other nominated roles, arrangements for high-risk areas or processes, how the building is checked and who reports to the fire service, and arrangements for training and drills. Larger or more complex premises need more, and small premises need less the plan is proportionate to the risk.

5. What makes a plan usable?
Being short, current and reachable. Plans fail when they are too long for anybody to read, when they name individuals who left two years ago, when they describe a layout that has since changed, and most practically when the only copy is in a building nobody can enter. A usable plan names roles rather than people, fits on a small number of pages, is accessible remotely, and has actually been read by those expected to follow it.

6. What are the main evacuation strategies?
Simultaneous evacuation moves everybody out at once and suits most workplaces. Phased or staged evacuation moves the floors nearest the fire first and others in sequence, used where moving everybody at once would overwhelm the stairs. Progressive horizontal evacuation moves people sideways into an adjoining protected compartment rather than out of the building, used in hospitals and care settings where full evacuation is not realistic. Some premises use defend-in-place arrangements, which depend entirely on compartmentation performing as designed.

7. How is the right strategy chosen?
It follows from the building’s design, its occupancy and the fire risk assessment not from preference. A strategy relies on the building supporting it: phased evacuation depends on compartmentation and an alarm system capable of signalling different zones; progressive horizontal evacuation depends on protected compartments large enough to receive the people moved into them; defend-in-place depends on compartmentation being intact. Applying a strategy the building was not designed for is one of the more dangerous planning errors, because it looks entirely reasonable on paper.

8. How should plans for people needing assistance be prepared?
In advance, individually, and with the person. A personal emergency evacuation plan identifies how the person will leave, by which route, who will assist, what equipment is required, where they will wait if a refuge is used and how they will communicate. It is agreed rather than imposed, reviewed when circumstances change, and it covers visitors and temporary conditions as well as permanent ones. Deciding at the moment of alarm who is going to help somebody down three flights of stairs is not a plan.

9. What scenarios do plans usually omit?
The ones outside normal hours. Night shifts with a handful of people, weekend working, cleaning staff who arrive after everybody has left, lone workers, contractors on site overnight, and deliveries at unsocial hours. Plans are typically written around a full building on a weekday afternoon, and the situations where somebody is most alone and least likely to be missed are frequently the least planned. Events, temporary structures and unusually high occupancy also warrant specific planning.

10. What is a planned prevention programme?
The scheduled activity that keeps fire safety measures working: alarm testing, detector servicing, emergency lighting tests, extinguisher servicing, fire door inspections, suppression and smoke control servicing, housekeeping inspections, electrical testing and review of the risk assessment. Setting it out as a calendar with owners and dates converts a set of good intentions into something auditable, and the record is as important as the activity.

11. How should drills be designed?
To find problems rather than to produce a time. Varying the day, time and scenario, blocking a route so people use a secondary one, running a drill on a night shift or at a shift change, and including people needing assistance all reveal more than a well-advertised Tuesday morning walk-out. Observers should be positioned in advance with specific things to watch. A drill everybody knew about, at a convenient time, on a clear route, tests almost nothing.

12. What should be recorded after a drill?
The date, time and scenario, the time to evacuate, and more usefully what went wrong. Where people hesitated, which routes congested, whether doors were closed, whether wardens covered their areas, whether refuge arrangements worked, whether visitors knew what to do, whether the roll call was accurate, and what has been changed as a result. A drill record showing only a time and a signature demonstrates that a drill happened, and nothing else.

13. What is salvage planning?
Deciding in advance what matters most, so that decisions are not made in an emergency. This covers what should be protected or removed if it can be done safely, what the fire service should be told about priority areas, how the site is secured afterwards against theft and unauthorised access, and how evidence is preserved for investigation and insurance. It never involves anybody re-entering a building to retrieve anything.

14. What should continuity planning cover?
What the organisation cannot operate without, and what happens if it is unavailable. Critical functions and how long they can be interrupted; records, data and systems, and where copies are held; specialist equipment and its replacement lead time; alternative premises; key suppliers and whether alternatives exist; how staff will be contacted and paid; and how customers will be told. The test is simple: if the building were unavailable tomorrow, what would stop, and for how long?

15. What is most commonly overlooked?
Records and data. Paper records, the only server, backup drives kept in the same building as the system they back up, and personal knowledge held by one person. Also: staff contact details stored only on a system inside the building, and insurance documents filed in the office. Something held only in the building at risk is not protected by any plan.

16. What should be understood about insurance?
That cover is specific and limits matter. Business interruption cover, its indemnity period, sums insured, exclusions, and requirements the policy imposes such as protection systems being maintained, or alarms being set all affect what is actually paid. Under-insurance is common, particularly where sums insured were set years earlier and reinstatement costs have risen. This is a matter for the organisation’s broker or insurer rather than a training course, and the point here is simply that the position should be understood before it is tested.

17. Who communicates after a fire, and to whom?
Somebody nominated in advance. Staff need to know whether to come in and whether they will be paid; customers need to know whether orders will be fulfilled; suppliers, insurers, the landlord and regulators may all need notification; and local media may arrive quickly. Decided beforehand, this is a short list of calls. Decided during the incident, it is where a difficult situation becomes worse, particularly where different people give inconsistent accounts.

18. When should plans be reviewed and tested?
After any significant change to the building, layout, occupancy, staffing, processes or hours; after any fire, false alarm pattern or near miss; after a drill that revealed problems; when people named in the plan leave; and periodically in any case. Continuity arrangements should be tested rather than assumed attempting to restore a backup is the only way to establish whether the backup works.

19. Does this qualification make me the responsible person?
No. The responsible person holds the statutory duties for the premises. This Award equips learners to prepare and maintain the plans and arrangements that support those duties.

20. Does it qualify me to carry out a fire risk assessment?
No. Fire risk assessment is a separate discipline with its own competence requirements. The plan flows from the assessment, and this Award covers the plan.

21. Does it replace professional continuity or insurance advice?
No. Business continuity management is a discipline in its own right, and insurance questions are for brokers and insurers. This Award covers the planning principles and identifies where specialist input is needed.

22. Who is this qualification aimed at?
Those writing or maintaining fire plans, facilities and premises managers, safety coordinators, continuity personnel, site and operations managers, event and venue managers, and business owners.

23. Are there any entry requirements?
No formal prerequisites are required. Learners should have a reasonable standard of English and be aged 16 or above.

24. How is the qualification assessed?
Through an online examination via the Britsafe Examination Management System, with a minimum pass mark of 70%.

25. What materials are provided with the course?
Learners receive digital (soft copy) course materials via the Britsafe learning management system. The course is delivered entirely online; there is no physical classroom attendance or physical course material.

26. What happens after I pass the exam?
Successful learners receive a certificate from Britsafe Qualifications UK Limited, featuring an anti-counterfeit hologram seal for authenticity. The certificate is available both as a physical copy and as a soft (digital) copy.

27. Is this qualification recognised internationally?
Yes. Britsafe Qualifications UK Limited delivers this qualification fully online to learners across the UK and internationally, though legal duties, evacuation requirements and insurance arrangements are national and should be checked locally.

28. Can this qualification lead to further study?
Yes. It provides a foundation for fire risk assessment training, business continuity management qualifications and Level 3 fire safety study.