Emergency Lighting – What Should Property Managers Do?

What is Emergency Lighting?

For those who are unaware, emergency lighting is abattery-backed lighting system that automatically switches on in the event of apower outage that leaves the usual mains lighting compromised. When it comes toevacuating a building, lighting is extremely important for ensuring that peoplecan make a safe exit.

Is Emergency Lighting a Requirement for All Buildings?

Not always – if Emergency Lighting isn’t present in yourcommunal parts then your regular Risk Assessment will review each time to seeif the lack of Emergency Lighting creates a significant risk. If there is aneed for it to be installed, then that same Risk Assessment should then make arecommendation accordingly.

Occasionally, ‘borrowed lighting’ from outside street lampsmay be deemed sufficient for consistently illuminating the areas, especially incity centre locations. Consistency of this borrowed lighting should also beconsidered as many councils across the UK now switch their street lamps offafter a certain time – if it cannot be guaranteed, then it should not be reliedupon, because that vital lighting may could be missing at the point that it isneeded the most.

What Should Property Managers Do?

Those responsible for managing an Emergency Lighting systemshould ensure that the activation test is completed monthly, the visualinspection of the LED’s are completed regularly (completed at your regular siteinspections) and serviced annually with a full drain down test to ensure thatthe battery capacity remains sufficient. In addition to this, they shouldensure that the emergency lighting for the block is not reliant on or affectedby timer switches.

Despite their evident importance, such testing requirementscan place a significant burden on Property and Facilities Mangers who don’talways have the time to visit their sites as regularly as they need to in orderto complete them. With the right training however, using contractors whoalready regularly attend those properties (such as cleaners) is widely acceptedas a way of ensuring the tests are completed as often as they need to be. Suchthird-party contractors will be able to check the Emergency Lighting LED’s,complete the activation test and fill out the inspection check sheets.

Sometimes engineered safety solutions, such as EmergencyLighting, work so well with such little impact on our everyday lives that it’seasy to either forget or underestimate just how vital they actually are. Withthat being said, however, there are some great technological solutions tomanaging testing requirements; one example would be self-testing emergencylighting systems which automatically check themselves, producing automatedreports in order to ensure that the battery and lamp in each emergency lightare fully operational.

What are the Legal and Financial Risks?

Even in a situation where nobody becomes injured, the Fire Enforcement authorities are there to catch the problems before they happen and make examples of those who have a blatant disregard for the safety of their residents.

For further advice and guidance, please get in touch with our team today.