Terrorism not being included in majority of evacuation plans

Evac+Chair International carried out the survey at the Health and Safety Event in April at NEC Birmingham, which found that 55% of participants made the admission. Almost 25% believed that they do not have the correct means of escape for everybody with mobility difficulties and 40% stated that fire is the main workplace risk that keeps them awake at night, out of all other health and safety risks.

There were other surprising results from the survey. Interestingly, 72% of people questioned identified that the rise in flexible working hours makes it harder for health and safety managers to keep track of their workforce in an emergency. Only 11% of people said they had identified changes to the built environment as a health and safety risk and only 10% identified changes to workforce demographics as a risk.

Evac+Chair sales and marketing director Ian Thompson said: “With a rapid change to workforces over the past decade, health and safety professionals now need to have greater clarity on how every member of the workforce should be made safe during emergency evacuation situations.

“These results are shocking and shows that we need to do more to educate health and safety managers on the changing nature of risk. It is important to identify and plan for changing scenarios. New risks to evacuation procedures, such as an aging workforce or terrorism, are emerging and many questions are being raised in the industry over whether these risks are being taken seriously enough.

“Accessibility is something that every organisation must address and that brings specific implications for those responsible for health and safety practices in buildings.”