What is a premises information box?
A premises information box is a secure box at a building holding information the fire and rescue service needs on arrival — building plans, the evacuation strategy, and details of people who may need assistance.
It exists because the first minutes matter and because nobody who knows the building may be there. An officer arriving at three in the morning needs the layout, the strategy and the risks without waiting for a managing agent to answer a phone.
Its contents are only useful if current. Plans showing a layout from before a refurbishment, or a list of residents needing assistance that is two years old, actively mislead the people relying on them.
Requirements for these boxes in certain residential buildings were introduced by regulation, and what must be in them and how it must be maintained are set out there rather than left to judgement.
In practice
A box installed at handover and never updated.
The plans inside show the building as designed. Two flats have been altered and the riser layout has changed.
The box exists so that an incident commander has accurate information at the moment they need it, and out-of-date information is worse than none because it will be acted on.
Updating it belongs to somebody by name or it belongs to nobody.
What goes wrong in practice
- Contents never updated after changes to the building or its occupants.
- Box installed but its location never notified to the fire and rescue service.
- Access arrangements that do not work — a lock nobody can open on arrival.