Emergency lighting testing: your monthly and annual duties

Why you have it, and why it fails

Emergency lighting exists for one scenario: the mains fails at the same moment people need to leave the building. That is not an unlikely pairing. A fire that takes out a distribution board, or a supply fault during an evacuation, produces a stairwell with no windows and no light, occupied by people who are already anxious.

The reason it fails is almost always the same. Emergency luminaires run from a battery, and batteries degrade quietly. A fitting can show a healthy green charge indicator while holding barely twenty minutes of charge. The only way to know is to disconnect the mains and time it. That is precisely what the annual test is for, and it is the test that gets skipped.

The legal position

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to make sure escape routes are adequately lit where necessary, and to keep fire safety equipment maintained in efficient working order and good repair. Emergency lighting falls squarely inside that.

The technical detail comes from BS 5266-1, the code of practice for emergency lighting of premises, supported by BS EN 50172, which covers emergency escape lighting systems and sets out the testing and record-keeping regime. As with fire alarms, the standards are not themselves law, but they are the benchmark against which your maintenance will be judged.

The monthly function test

The monthly test proves that every emergency luminaire will switch to its battery and light up. It is short by design, because the point is to confirm changeover without flattening the batteries.

1. Simulate a mains failure to each luminaire or circuit, using the test key switch, the fitting's own test facility, or an automatic test system.
2. Walk the route and confirm every emergency luminaire and every illuminated exit sign is lit.
3. Restore the mains supply.
4. Confirm each fitting's charge indicator returns to normal.
5. Record the result, listing any luminaire that failed.

Keep the test short. BS 5266 is clear that the function test should last only long enough to confirm the lamps operate, because the batteries need to recover before the next real emergency. A few minutes is enough.

The annual full duration test

This is the one that actually tells you something. Every emergency luminaire is run from its battery for its full rated duration, which for most UK installations is three hours.

At the end of the period, each fitting must still be producing adequate light. A luminaire that dies at ninety minutes has failed, even though it passed every monthly test that year, because those tests only ever proved it could switch on.

Plan around the recovery period

After a full discharge, batteries need up to 24 hours to recharge. During that window your emergency lighting cannot be relied on, which has two practical consequences:

• Carry out the test at a time of low occupancy and low risk, typically at the end of a working day, over a weekend, or during a planned shutdown
• Do not test the whole building at once if that would leave a large occupied area unprotected. Testing in sections across a few days is entirely acceptable and often more sensible

What we do with the failures

A luminaire that fails the duration test needs a new battery, a new lamp, or replacing outright. Emergency lighting batteries typically last around four years, so on any installation more than four years old, expect some failures. That is normal and it is the whole reason the test exists. What is not acceptable is finding the failures and leaving them.

Automatic test systems

Self-testing emergency lighting has become considerably more common, and for larger sites it is worth the additional cost. The luminaires test themselves on a programmed schedule and report failures to a central panel or an app, which removes the labour of walking every corridor with a test key and removes the risk of someone quietly not doing it.

Two things to be aware of. First, an automatic system still needs someone to read the reports and act on the failures, which is a duty you cannot automate away. Second, the system itself needs periodic verification. Automatic testing reduces the manual work, it does not remove the responsibility.

The logbook

BS EN 50172 expects a written record for the system, and in an enforcement visit this is the document that gets asked for. It should hold the system details and commissioning certificate, a luminaire schedule with locations, every monthly and annual test result, every defect with the date it was rectified, and any alteration to the building that changes what the lighting needs to cover.

Where cover usually goes missing

Emergency lighting is designed around a building's layout at a moment in time. Buildings change and the lighting design rarely gets revisited. The gaps we find most often on survey are:

• New partitions that create a corridor or a dead-end with no emergency luminaire covering it
• Changed exit routes where a door has been sealed or repurposed and the signage still points at it
• External escape routes and the final exit door, which need illumination to a place of safety, not just to the threshold
• Fire fighting equipment and call points, which should be illuminated so they can be found in the dark
• Stairs and changes of level, which need specific attention because they are where people fall
• Plant rooms and lift cars, which are frequently overlooked entirely

Testing will not catch any of this. Testing proves the fittings you have still work. It says nothing about the fittings you should have and do not. That requires a survey against the current layout, which is part of what a thorough fire risk assessment picks up.

Frequently asked questions

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