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The director of fire safety engineering at Halcrow Group quite rightly points out that the draft Part B of the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Regulations proposes to no longer discriminate against people without disabilities by defining an evacuation lift as: "A lift that may be used for the evacuation of people in a fire." However, there are a number of incorrect statements under the section, ‘The European View':

• The CEN/TC10/WG6 committee in Europe was not set up to consider using lifts for evacuation. Its remit is to work with fire standards committees to provide tools for fire safety. These currently include the development of EN81-58 ‘Fire resistance of lift landing doors', EN81-72 ‘Firefighters lifts' and EN81-73 ‘The behaviour of lifts in the event of a fire'. The committee made a proposal in autumn 2005 for a work item to develop a standard for evacuation lifts working with CEN/TC10/127. It is important to note that the lift industry does not "invent" fire safety equipments, but responds to fire safety requests to provide "tools" for fire service use - just as a hosepipe is a tool.

• The US National Institute of Standards (NIST) did not conclude "buildings should be designed to allow evacuation by staircases and not lifts… " It concluded at Recommendation 21: "NIST recommends the installation of fire-protected and structurally hardened elevators… " (www.nist.gov).

• The harmonized European standard EN81-72 does not "recommend", but requires (read Annex ZA) safety rules for firefighting lifts.

It does not specify protected lobbies etc. The standard specifically stated at Annex A (informative) is "The building construction… are subject to national ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Regulations". In the UK this is BS5588, Part 5, 26 November 2004. This standard specifies the environment in which a firefighting lift is placed.

• Formal guidance in the UK has been available for evacuation lifts since 1988.

It is BS 5588, Part 8: 1999 (under revision). However, this only applies to disabled people and still discriminates against other people.

In my opinion, after a survey, many lifts already installed, with a little modification, could be used for, say, 15 minutes, as evacuation lifts under the supervision of the building management.

Dr Eur Ing Gina Barney, PhD, MSc, BSc, CEng, FIFI Member BSI Life Committee MHE/4