Can you name the date your tallest residential scheme's design was last checked against the current Approved Document B — and whether an evacuation lift was in scope?
Most heads of property I speak to can name the fire strategy for their flagship block. Far fewer can tell me which edition of the guidance it was drawn against, or whether the lift in the core is a fire-fighting lift, an evacuation lift, or a passenger lift someone has relabelled in a drawing register. That gap is now a live compliance question, because on 16 September 2026 the government updated Approved Document B to introduce guidance on second stairs and evacuation lifts in taller residential buildings.
The duty, in plain words
Approved Document B is the statutory guidance that supports the fire safety requirements of the Building Regulations in England. The 16 September 2026 update sits on top of a document that has already been amended repeatedly — 2020, 2022, 2025 and 2026 amendments are now collated with the 2029 amendments in the current volumes. For a residential block over 18m, the practical effect is that an evacuation lift is no longer a nice-to-have in a design review. It is guidance the designer, the principal contractor and, later, the duty holder will be measured against.
The duty holder in occupation is the one who answers for it. Under the Building Safety Regulator's regime, that is the Accountable Person for the building, and the evidence trail runs from design intent through commissioning to the maintenance records in the plant room.
What the regulator actually relied on
The 16 September 2026 update did not arrive in isolation. It followed a consultation run by the Building Safety Regulator and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, published on 25 March 2026 and extended to 1 July 2026, which proposed recommending evacuation lifts in residential buildings above 18m. The same consultation also proposed a threshold on combustible elements of structure, revised guidance on external wall systems and balconies, updated roof guidance including solar PV, and a higher structural fire resistance rating for open-sided car parks.
Read that list again. The regulator is not tinkering. It is tightening the whole envelope of tall residential design, and the evacuation lift is one thread in a much larger rope. If your portfolio includes buildings designed or refurbished in the last decade, the question is not whether the guidance has moved. It is whether your as-built information has kept up.
The current volumes are published on GOV.UK as Approved Document B (fire safety), and the 2029 amendments are set out in the 2029 amendments to Approved Document B. If your design team is still working from a 2019 printout, that is the first thing to fix.
Which duty gets missed in a residential block
In a residential tower, the evacuation lift duty fails in a predictable way. The lift is installed, commissioned and signed off. Then the building is handed over, the O&M manuals go into a cupboard, and the lift maintenance contract is let on the standard passenger-lift schedule. Nobody writes down that this particular lift has a fire mode, a protected supply, a lobby with the right fire resistance, and a control system that has to be tested on a schedule the insurer will ask about.
Two years later, a fire risk assessment flags the lift as 'evacuation lift — confirm maintenance regime'. The building manager confirms the lift is serviced. The assessor asks for the fire mode test record. There isn't one. That is the moment the compliance exposure moves from the plant room to the director's desk.
The inspector's question is not 'is there a lift'. It is 'show me the commissioning certificate, the fire mode test schedule, and the last three test results'. If you cannot produce those for every building over 18m in your portfolio, you have a gap, and it is the kind of gap that surfaces at the worst possible time — during a Building Safety Regulator review, an insurer's renewal survey, or a fire and rescue authority visit after an incident.
How you would fare in the same audit
Run the test on your own portfolio now, before a regulator or an insurer runs it for you. Pick your tallest residential building. Ask three questions of the building manager: what type of lift serves the core, what fire mode it has, and when it was last tested. If the answer to any of those takes more than a day to produce, the evidence trail is weaker than your board assumes.
Then check the design stage. For any scheme currently in planning, in construction, or in a refurbishment that triggers Building Regulations approval, confirm which edition of Approved Document B the design is being assessed against. The 16 September 2026 update is the current position, and the consultation that preceded it — the review of Approved Document B: Fire safety guidance — signals more change is coming. A design frozen against an older edition is a future remediation bill.
For buildings already in management, the work is different. It is about proving the lift does what the fire strategy says it does, on a schedule, with records a regulator would accept. That is not a facilities task. It is a duty-holder task, and it sits with the person whose name is on the paperwork.
If you want the fuller picture on the September 2026 change, I wrote about it when the date was confirmed: evacuation lifts mandatory for new residential towers over 18m. And if your portfolio includes buildings going through renewal or refurbishment, the 1 July 2026 ADB window is the other date to have in your diary.
Your 60-second self-check
- Can you name, for every residential building over 18m in your portfolio, whether the core lift is an evacuation lift, a fire-fighting lift, or neither?
- Could you produce the fire mode test record for that lift, dated within the last maintenance cycle, today?
- For every scheme in design or construction, do you know which edition of Approved Document B the design is being assessed against?
If any of those answers is uncertain, the free 5-minute Director's Risk Check will show you which statutory deadlines and penalties bear on your portfolio, with a citation for each, so the pressure points are clear before a regulator, an insurer or a buyer finds them for you.
Herman's verdict
An evacuation lift is only as good as the test record that proves it works, and a test record is only as good as the director who can put their hand on it. The 16 September 2026 update has moved the guidance; the question is whether your evidence has moved with it.
— Herman
Until next time — keep the evidence closer than the deadline.
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About HermanWa
HermanWa is a building compliance and operations platform for property and facilities teams in the United Kingdom and Singapore, with portfolios across the Gulf. It keeps one auditable file per building — statutory deadlines, inspection evidence, contractor work, energy and carbon — and its AI assistant, Herman, answers questions about your buildings in plain English. HermanWa tracks obligations including fire risk assessments and fire door checks, Building Safety Act duties, Legionella (ACOP L8), EICR, gas safety and EPC in the UK, and SCDF fire certificates, Periodic Facade and Structural Inspections, lift permits and Green Mark in Singapore. Directors can check their exposure with the free Director's Risk Check.