Waking watch: a bridge, not a destination

A waking watch is a temporary arrangement in which trained staff patrol a building continuously to detect fire and raise the alarm, because the building's own arrangements cannot currently be relied upon to do it. It exists to make a building safe enough to occupy while something is fixed. The difficulty across the sector has been that the fixing takes years and the watch does not stop.

For responsible persons this is not merely a cost problem, although it is an acute one for leaseholders. A waking watch that has become the permanent fire strategy is a sign that the risk assessment's remedial actions have not been closed, and that is the finding that attracts attention.

What it is actually compensating for

A waking watch is normally introduced where a building's evacuation strategy has been undermined. Most commonly that means compartmentation can no longer be relied upon to support a stay-put strategy, so a simultaneous evacuation is required and the building has no means of alerting everybody at once. Occasionally it covers a failed or inadequate alarm system, or missing or defective fire doors on escape routes.

Naming the specific defect matters, because it determines what ends the watch. A watch introduced because of external wall construction ends when the wall is remediated or an alternative alerting arrangement is installed. A watch introduced because the alarm system failed ends considerably sooner and far more cheaply. Buildings where nobody has written down precisely what the watch compensates for tend to be buildings where it never ends.

The common alarm as the exit route

Sector guidance has for several years pointed firmly toward installing a common fire alarm system as the route out of a prolonged waking watch, on the straightforward basis that it achieves the same alerting function far more reliably and at a fraction of the running cost. Funding arrangements to support this have existed in various forms, and the detail and availability of such schemes change — it is worth checking the current position rather than assuming a scheme referenced two years ago still operates as described.

The economics are usually stark. A watch sufficient to cover a mid-rise residential block around the clock costs a substantial recurring sum; an alarm system is a one-off capital cost that frequently pays for itself inside a year. Where a responsible person has not made that comparison in writing, the question of why not is a fair one.

What a competent watch actually requires

A waking watch is not a security guard with a torch. The people doing it need to understand the building's layout and escape routes, know how to raise the alarm and how to initiate the evacuation strategy, be able to communicate with residents including those with specific needs, and know what to do and not do on finding a fire. Patrol routes and intervals need to be defined so that no part of the building is unobserved for longer than the strategy assumes.

The records that evidence this are patrol logs showing routes and times actually walked, training and briefing records for each individual deployed, and handover records between shifts. Where a watch is subcontracted, the responsible person remains responsible for its adequacy, and 'the security company provided whoever was available' is not an answer that survives scrutiny after an incident.

Residents and the information they are owed

A change from stay-put to simultaneous evacuation is one of the most significant things that can happen to residents of a block, and it is frequently communicated badly. People who have been told for years to remain in their flat need to understand that the instruction has changed, why, what the new instruction is, and how they will be told to act on it.

Personal emergency evacuation planning for residents who cannot self-evacuate is a live area of policy and practice, and expectations have been shifting. Responsible persons should work from current guidance rather than from what was expected when the watch began, particularly where a watch has been running long enough that the regulatory backdrop has moved underneath it.

Treating it as an open action with an end date

The practical discipline that distinguishes buildings that exit a waking watch from those that do not is unglamorous: the watch is recorded as an interim measure against a specific named defect, with an owner, a remediation plan, a target date and a review interval — and the reviews actually happen and are minuted, including when the date slips and why.

Where a watch instead sits in a service charge schedule as a recurring line item with no linked action, it has quietly become infrastructure. The fire risk assessment will keep recommending it, because the defect it compensates for is still there, and each new assessment will inherit the position without anybody revisiting the plan.

Responsible persons holding buildings in this state should expect to be asked three questions: what precisely is the watch compensating for, what is the plan and date for removing the need for it, and why has a common alarm not been installed in the meantime. Being able to answer all three from documented decisions is the difference between an interim measure and an unexplained permanent cost.

Requirements under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order and subsequent fire safety legislation, together with sector guidance on waking watches and alarm installation, change and should be taken from current official sources rather than from precedent within an organisation.

Cost, service charge and the conversation with leaseholders

Waking watch costs are typically recovered through the service charge, and for leaseholders in affected buildings the sums have been life-altering. That has produced disputes about recoverability, challenges before tribunals, and a reasonable expectation that a responsible person can justify both the measure and its cost.

Justification means showing that the watch is proportionate to the risk identified, that alternatives were considered, and that the arrangement is being actively managed down rather than simply renewed. A responsible person who has not obtained comparative costs, or who cannot show why an alarm installation was not pursued, is in a weak position in front of leaseholders and in front of a tribunal.

Transparency tends to defuse more than it inflames. Sharing the risk assessment finding, the remediation plan and the cost comparison with residents treats them as parties with a legitimate interest, which they are, and makes the eventual proposal to install an alarm a continuation of a conversation rather than another unexplained charge.

Keeping the fire risk assessment current underneath it

A long-running waking watch has a habit of freezing the assessment that produced it. The building has not changed, the finding has not changed, and the assessment gets renewed with the same recommendation. Meanwhile occupancy changes, residents with new mobility needs move in, compartmentation degrades further, and the interim measure designed for the original position is carrying a different one.

Reassessment during a prolonged interim period is therefore not an administrative renewal but a genuine question: is this measure still adequate for the building as it is now. Assessments that simply reproduce the previous finding, year after year, are visible as such to anybody reading the sequence.

The same applies to the watch's own performance. Patrol logs showing routes consistently walked short, or shifts covered by people with no record of building-specific briefing, mean the measure the assessment relies on is not the measure actually in place.