How Often Should Emergency Lighting be Tested?

Emergency Lighting forms part of a complete fire protection system, and is a statutory requirement in commercial businesses. Lighting must be provided to illuminate firefighting equipment and allow occupants to safely escape a premises in an emergency situation, where the normal lights may be out of use.

To ensure your Emergency Lighting system will work as expected in a crisis, a regular schedule of maintenance is required by both the customer, and the industry technicians.

Service & Maintenance

As a requirement of The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, Emergency Lighting must be provided and maintained to an good working order, whilst conforming to the recommendations in BS 5266-1:2025.

The Responsible Person must ensure that service visits are booked and undertaken by qualified technicians.

How Often Should Emergency Lighting be Tested?

Churches Fire & Security recommends that emergency lighting should be tested monthly. This must be carried out by isolating the electricity supply, and will be demonstrated by our technicians at point of installation. A test key will be provided to the Responsible Person to allow them to carry out the monthly test, as detailed in the following video.

As with all maintenance checks of fire and security, the date and result of the tests must be recorded in the company fire log book. Any issues must immediately be reported to the Responsible Person and escalated to Churches if necessary.

BS 5266-1:2025

BS 5266-1:2025 is the central Code of Practice for Emergency Lighting standards and regulations. This Standard outlines the required certification, testing schedule, design and guidance for systems.

Failure to meet the requirements, and non-conformities can result in legal action or fines.

Trust the Experts

At Churches Fire & Security, we are experts in business fire and security protection, helping our customers to keep their property, assets and personnel safe from the threat of fire and theft.

We also offer a full range of quality fire and security services including Sprinkler Systems, Dry & Wet Risers, Emergency Lighting, Fire Alarms, CCTV Systems, Access Control, Intruder Alarms and 24/7 Monitoring.