Landlord compliance

Commercial Emergency Lighting Certificate

BS 5266 duration testing and certification for offices, shops and commercial buildings.

From £65 (inc VAT) Certificate issued same day 12-month workmanship guarantee

Book this service 07426 409342

Starting from

£65inc VAT

up to 3 emergency lights · commercial premises

Out-of-hours duration testing at no premium

Coverage assessed against the building as it is today

Panel-monitored and central battery systems fully supported

Log book completed on site, ready for a fire officer visit

Book online

Overview

What is a Commercial Emergency Lighting certificate?

Commercial emergency lighting testing covers the escape lighting in offices, shops, restaurants, warehouses and other business premises. The regime is the same as residential — a monthly functional test and an annual full-duration test — but the systems are larger, frequently panel-monitored, and the coverage requirements more demanding because open-plan areas, high-risk task areas and larger occupancy loads all carry their own standards. We test out of hours as standard so the duration test never runs during trading.

Why it matters

Why it's worth getting right

In a commercial building the responsible person under fire safety law is you, and emergency lighting is one of the first things a fire officer inspects because it is one of the easiest to verify and one of the most commonly neglected. Beyond enforcement, the practical risk is real: an open-plan office or a warehouse with racking is genuinely disorienting in darkness, and occupants are far less familiar with the escape routes than residents of a building they live in.

Your duty as the responsible person

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the responsible person — normally the employer, occupier or the person in control of the premises — must ensure that emergency routes and exits requiring illumination are provided with emergency lighting of adequate intensity in the event of the normal lighting failing. BS 5266-1 defines the testing regime and BS EN 1838 sets the minimum illuminance: not less than 1 lux along the centre line of a defined escape route, 0.5 lux in open anti-panic areas, and 15 lux in high-risk task areas. Records must be kept in the fire safety log book and produced on request.

Regulations & standards

The rules this work is carried out to

Every inspection we do is measured against a published standard — here are the ones that apply to this service.

RRO 2005

Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005

Responsible person duty for adequate escape route illumination.

BS 5266-1

Emergency lighting — code of practice

Monthly functional and annual full-duration testing regime.

BS EN 1838

Minimum illuminance requirements

1 lux escape routes · 0.5 lux open areas · 15 lux high-risk task areas.

In detail

Understanding your Commercial Emergency Lighting

The technical detail behind the certificate — what gets checked, what the results mean, and the decisions that actually affect your property.

Escape routes, open areas and high-risk task areas

Commercial premises usually contain all three categories and each has a different requirement. A defined escape route — a corridor, a stairwell — needs a minimum of 1 lux along its centre line. An open anti-panic area, meaning any open space larger than about 60 m² where people may need to reach an escape route, needs at least 0.5 lux across the empty floor. A high-risk task area, where a process must be shut down safely before evacuation, needs 10% of normal illuminance and never less than 15 lux — think a commercial kitchen with live fryers, a workshop with rotating machinery, or a laboratory. Buildings that change use are the ones most often caught out: an office converted to a workshop inherits lighting designed for the wrong category entirely.

Central battery systems and monitored panels

Larger commercial installations often use a central battery system, where a single battery bank feeds all luminaires over fire-rated cabling, rather than self-contained fittings with individual batteries. The advantage is centralised maintenance and easier monitoring; the risk is that a single point of failure affects the whole building, which makes testing more critical, not less. Where an addressable panel monitors the system, we interrogate it as part of the visit, but we still physically verify a sample of luminaires — a panel reports what its sensors tell it, and a fitting obscured by new ducting will report perfectly healthy while illuminating nothing.

Scheduling a duration test without stopping business

The annual test isolates the lighting supply for three hours and leaves the batteries flat afterwards, needing a full recharge cycle — typically up to 24 hours — before the system offers full protection again. That has two implications. It should not be run immediately before the building's busiest period, and it is best carried out outside occupied hours. We attend evenings and weekends at no premium for exactly this reason, and we plan the recharge window into the schedule so you are never left with a building that is occupied and unprotected.

When your building changes, your lighting design changes

Emergency lighting is designed around a specific layout, and it silently stops complying the moment that layout changes. New partitioning creates corridors that were never lit. Racking installed in a warehouse blocks luminaires and creates aisles requiring their own coverage. A suspended ceiling drops fittings below new ductwork. A change of use turns an open office into a high-risk task area with a tenfold increase in required illuminance. Any of these means the system needs reassessing rather than simply retesting, and our inspection reports coverage against the building as it is today, not as it was when the system was installed.

Warning signs

When a commercial system needs reassessment

Testing confirms the fittings work; these indicate the design itself no longer fits the building:

Partitioning, racking or fit-out changes since the system was designed

A change of use — office to workshop, retail to hospitality

New suspended ceilings or ductwork obscuring existing fittings

Any escape route, corridor or stairwell with no emergency luminaire

Fault or fail indications on the monitoring panel

No duration test recorded in the log book within twelve months

Fire officer or insurer has raised emergency lighting at inspection

Central battery system more than five years old with no battery replacement recorded

The risks

The commercial exposure

Emergency lighting failures carry direct regulatory and financial consequences:

!Enforcement and prohibition notices under the RRO 2005, closing premises

!Unlimited fines and, for serious breaches, custodial sentences

!Personal liability for directors and the named responsible person

!Fire and business interruption claims challenged for want of testing records

!Failed insurer and landlord inspections at lease review

!Dilapidations liability at lease end where systems were not maintained

!Evacuation in darkness through an unfamiliar open-plan or racked environment

Maintaining a commercial system

Run the monthly functional test and record it — this can be delegated to a facilities or duty manager and takes minutes. Schedule the annual duration test outside occupied hours and factor in the recharge window afterwards. Keep the fire safety log book on site and current, because an inspector will ask for it in person rather than accepting that your contractor holds it. Reassess coverage whenever the layout or use of the building changes rather than waiting for the annual visit. On central battery systems, plan battery replacement on a five-year cycle rather than running to failure, since a central system failure removes protection from the entire building at once.

Why us

The benefits of booking your Commercial Emergency Lighting with us

Accredited, transparent and built around making compliance easy.

Out-of-hours duration testing at no premium

Coverage assessed against the building as it is today

Panel-monitored and central battery systems fully supported

Log book completed on site, ready for a fire officer visit

Recharge window planned in so the building is never left unprotected

Multi-site portfolio pricing available

What's included

Everything covered in your Commercial Emergency Lighting

One all-inclusive price — here is exactly what the engineer does on site and what you receive afterwards.

Full annual duration test with luminaires verified at the end of the period

Panel interrogation on monitored and self-testing systems

Coverage assessment against escape route, open area and high-risk task categories

Central battery system inspection where applicable

Fire safety log book completed on site

Out-of-hours and weekend attendance at no premium

Same-day certificate, insurer- and fire-officer-ready

Pricing

Simple, all-inclusive pricing

The price you see is the price you pay — VAT included, with no hidden call-out fees. Your final price depends on the size of your property; we'll confirm an exact, all-inclusive quote before we attend.

Commercial Emergency Lighting from

£65inc VAT

up to 3 emergency lights · commercial premises

Get my exact price

All prices include VAT · 12-month workmanship guarantee

Commercial emergency lighting pricing

Number of emergency lights	Price (inc VAT)
Up to 3 emergency lights	£65.00
3–5 emergency lights	£89.00
5–8 emergency lights	£125.00
8–12 emergency lights	£170.00

All prices include VAT and log book completion. Larger systems, central battery installations and multi-site portfolios are quoted individually — send us a fitting count and we will confirm the same day.

Prices are all-inclusive of VAT with no hidden call-out fees. Where they genuinely apply, parking (£5) and the London Congestion Charge (£18) are passed on at cost and always shown up front.

The process

How your appointment works

Simple, transparent and designed around you and your tenants.

Step 1

Survey and categorise

We identify every luminaire and categorise each area as escape route, open area or high-risk task area.

Step 2

Panel check and functional test

Monitoring panels are interrogated and switch-over verified on every fitting before the duration test starts.

Step 3

Out-of-hours duration test

The full rated period is run outside trading hours, with each luminaire verified at the end and the recharge window planned in.

Step 4

Certify, log and advise

Certificate issued same day, log book completed on site, and any coverage gaps reported with a quote to correct them.

FAQs

Commercial Emergency Lighting — frequently asked questions

A short functional test monthly and a full-duration test annually, under BS 5266-1. The monthly test can be carried out in-house by a duty manager; the annual test and certificate should be done by a competent person.

Yes, at no additional charge — and we recommend it. The duration test isolates the lighting supply for three hours and leaves batteries needing a recharge cycle afterwards, so running it during trading is disruptive and leaves the building temporarily under-protected.

BS EN 1838 requires not less than 1 lux along the centre line of a defined escape route, 0.5 lux across open anti-panic areas over roughly 60 m², and 10% of normal illuminance — never less than 15 lux — in high-risk task areas such as commercial kitchens and workshops.

Yes. Self-testing removes the labour of routine functional tests, but a competent person must still verify coverage remains adequate, confirm the self-test regime is genuinely operating, physically check a sample of fittings, and complete the log book. A panel reports what its sensors say, not whether a fitting is obscured by new ductwork.

Probably not without reassessment. New partitions create corridors that were never lit, and a change of use can move an area into a higher illuminance category. We assess coverage against the building as it stands today and report any gaps.

Book now

Book your Commercial Emergency Lighting today

Fill in the form and we'll confirm your appointment and an all-inclusive price, usually within the hour. Prefer to talk? Call us and we'll book you in within two minutes.

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07426 409342

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