Evacuation Chairs: Schools and Colleges

Jacob Collier Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 706513 relating to evacuation chairs in schools and colleges.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec, and a privilege to lead this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is especially appropriate that we are having the debate during UK Disability History Month, which asks us to recognise the realities faced by disabled people in our society and to confront the barriers that remain. Few things bring those barriers into clearer focus than the question of whether disabled children can evacuate safely from their school in an emergency. More than 100,000 people signed this petition, because they believe that every child deserves a safe and dignified exit from a building during a fire alarm or real fire, and that disabled pupils must not face greater danger than their friends.

I pay tribute to the petition’s creator, 16-year-old Lucas Vezza-O’Brien, who is here with us in the Gallery today. He is joined by his mum, and by Nick from the Emergency Group, who has been supporting Lucas in his campaign and donated evacuation chairs to Lucas’s school.

Lucas has shown incredible courage in reliving a horrifying experience so that other children will not go through the same ordeal. I want to start the debate with Lucas’s story and the reason why he started the petition in the first place. In November of last year, a small electrical fire broke out at Hyde high school. Staff followed the procedures available to them. Pupils were evacuated, but Lucas, who uses a wheelchair, was taken to a designated safe area—rather than being evacuated with his classmates—because the school did not have an evacuation chair to bring him downstairs. He was led to a room on an upper floor and left there, alone and with the smell of smoke in the air. What makes that even more disturbing is that after Lucas was placed in that refuge, the fact that he was still in the building was not reported to firefighters. He waited in that room while everyone else believed that he had been brought out to safety.

The fear that Lucas felt is captured in the poem that he wrote afterwards, which has touched so many people. He says:

“The bell screams loud the smoke runs fast

Footsteps pound as students dash past

The fire alarm wails its desperate cry

But here I sit just asking why

No ramp, no chair to help me flee

Just stairs that laugh and imprison me

My hands shake tight upon my wheels

A rising fear too sharp to feel”.

That is a powerful reminder that disabled children and the wider disability community are too often asked to trust systems that have not been built for them.

[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, and Lucas’s poem really resonates with that. In my constituency, we have Evac+Chair, which creates evacuation chairs like the ones we have in Parliament. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the current legislation, the stay-put policy from an outdated era—1962—does not recognise that the technology has moved on?

[Jacob Collier]

Yes, absolutely. I will come on to some of the legislation later, but the hon. Member highlights a really important issue and I know that he is a big supporter in this space, so I thank him for that intervention.

Fire and rescue services in England attended 417 primary fires in education premises in the last financial year; primary fires are generally more serious fires causing damage to property or harm to people. Of these primary fires, 355 were accidental fires and 62 were deliberate. When we look at the current legal and guidance framework, the gaps become clear.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is nice to see you in the Chair, Sir Alec. I did not know that you would be chairing Westminster Hall. I wish you well.

The provision of evacuation chairs is imperative—all schools and colleges, across the whole of the United Kingdom, must have them for pupils, staff and visitors. Furthermore, where evacuation chairs exist, staff must be trained in their use. Without mandatory training, the presence of a chair alone does not ensure safety. Does the hon. Member agree that there must be an adequate number of staff trained in the use of these chairs so that schools can make full and proper use of them in the event of an emergency?

[Jacob Collier]

I agree with the hon. Member—he must have read what is coming up in my speech. He is absolutely right, and I will come to that point.

Under the Equality Act 2010, schools have duties to avoid substantial disadvantage for disabled pupils, but they are not required to make any physical changes to features of the building for individual children. Instead, they must prepare long-term accessibility plans that look years ahead. That means that a multi-storey school does not have to provide an immediate safe route for a specific child who cannot use stairs. Fire safety legislation requires responsible persons to ensure that everyone can escape safely, but it does not specify how. It does not mandate personal emergency evacuation plans—or PEEPs—for pupils who cannot self-evacuate. It does not require evacuation chairs. It still allows the use of refuge rooms, even though children cannot be left alone in them and cannot legally be lifted by staff.

Current guidance for the evacuation of disabled pupils is simply not sufficient, as has been highlighted by Lucas’s experience. In many cases, PEEPs do not identify the need for evacuation chairs, which means that schools conclude the equipment is unnecessary and therefore never purchase it. PEEPs vary widely in quality, and often lack a clear method for onward evacuation. They need to be significantly strengthened.

In 2015, the Equality and Human Rights Commission commented that schools were in effect exempt from removing barriers to extraction during emergency. That exemption explains why so many pupils remain unprotected. There is also a profound accountability gap: no single regulator or public body is charged with assessing whether disabled pupils can be evacuated safely. No one is tasked with checking whether reasonable adjustments have been made for the purpose of extraction. Ofsted does not inspect evacuation readiness or assess whether disabled pupils can leave a building in an emergency. In that vacuum, schools are left to interpret a patchwork of rules that are not abundantly clear. In a response to a written question from the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), the Department for Education stated:

“Schools and their responsible bodies are not obliged to notify the department of fires at their premises and we therefore do not routinely collect or record this data…nor information on fire-safety-related repairs.”

PEEPs are not legally mandated in schools. They are planned to become mandatory for residential buildings following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, but remain non-mandatory in school environments, which have the highest numbers of individuals who cannot self-evacuate. That contrast should concern every Member of this House. In some circumstances, staying put and awaiting the fire service is the safest approach. When someone dials 999, fire control operators will issue that safety advice. In Lucas’s case it was not even recognised where he was in the building. That highlights a need for a clearer process for everybody to follow so that all people are accounted for and safely evacuated.

Evacuation chairs are not suitable for every disabled pupil, but they are a safe and internationally recognised non-lifting method for bringing a person downstairs in an emergency. When a child cannot use stairs and has a lesson on the upper floor, the school must have a safe evacuation method. It should not fall on teachers to improvise solutions when an alarm is sounding and smoke is spreading, and it should not fall on a child to wait in fear and hope that someone will remember that they are upstairs.

This petition is measured in its request. It does not call for every school to purchase equipment that is not relevant to their buildings; it calls for evacuation chairs or equivalent equipment to be required when a pupil’s needs make them necessary. It also calls for personal emergency evacuation plans to be prepared for those who cannot self-evacuate and, crucially, for them to contain a clear method for reaching safety. Finally, it calls for a clear national standard, so that schools are not guessing what is expected of them.

The Labour Government have committed to building safer and more inclusive public services, and we promise to learn the lessons of the Grenfell tragedy. We also promise that no one who cannot self-evacuate will be left without proper planning. Schools must be a part of that commitment.

Today, I urge the Government to act. We must ensure that personal emergency evacuation plans are required for every pupil or staff member who cannot self-evacuate. A personal emergency evacuation plan must set out the equipment, the route, the timing and the staff support needed. We must establish national expectations for evacuation equipment—not just a blanket rule, but a clear principle that when a child is taught on an upper floor and cannot use stairs, their school must provide a safe assisted evacuation method.

We must provide consistent guidance and high-quality training, so that staff know exactly what to do. We must make accountability meaningful. It must be clear which organisation checks whether disabled pupils can be evacuated and whether reasonable adjustments have been made for that purpose. Finally, we must design these policies with disabled pupils, their families and school staff at the centre. They know better than any of us what a safe and dignified evacuation looks like.

I will close my remarks by quoting the end of Lucas’s poem—with a plea that we cannot ignore:

“So hear my voice through smoke and ash

Make sure the next can make a dash

For no one’s life should end in flame

Because the world forgot their name”.

Our responsibility as legislators and as a Government is not only to remember the names but to protect those children, to ensure that no child is ever forgotten in a refuge room, and to build a system where a disabled pupil is not an afterthought but a child whose safety is guaranteed. We need to ensure that no student is ever left behind like Lucas was.

I thank those who took the time to meet me in preparation for this debate, and I especially thank Nick and Lucas. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other hon. Members, and to Ministers turning this petition into meaningful action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Collier]

I thank all Members who have taken part in this debate. In particular, I thank the Minister for her commitment to meet Lucas so that she can hear more about his story, and to take on board some of the things that have come out of the debate—one thing I have learned is that I need to ensure that people know how to say Uttoxeter. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) highlighted the contrast in the changes to personal evacuation plans that we are making following Grenfell; we are making them mandatory in certain settings but not in schools. Finally, I thank Lucas and Nick for their work on the campaign. Lucas has been in the media today, and I am sure that he will continue to be until he gets the changes that he needs to see. I thank him for coming today and for starting the petition, and I thank everyone who signed it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 706513 relating to evacuation chairs in schools and colleges.