Insights · Standards
The rulebook for what happens when the lights go out — rewritten.
When normal lighting fails, emergency lighting is what lets people leave safely, stay safely, or keep essential work running. BS 5266-1 is the UK code of practice that says how that should be designed, installed, tested and evidenced. In October 2025 it was fully revised for the first time since 2016 — and the old edition is withdrawn.
Core principle
Compliance isn't what you did. It's what you can evidence.
The 2025 revision
A wider duty, and a heavier evidence burden.
BS 5266-1:2025 came into effect on 31 October 2025, superseding the 2016 edition. It works alongside the updated European standards BS EN 1838:2024 (performance values) and BS EN 50172:2024 (system requirements). Four changes matter most to anyone responsible for a building.
- 01
Scope
More than escape routes.
The standard now formally covers three types: emergency escape lighting, local area lighting for completing critical tasks safely, and standby lighting that lets normal activity continue through a power failure. If your building has a stay-put strategy, high-risk tasks, or operations that can't simply stop — the standard now speaks to you directly.
- 02
Resilience
One fault should never take out your emergency lighting.
On centrally supplied circuits, no more than 20 luminaires may be affected by one fault; high-risk task areas need supply from at least two separate circuits; and every room and escape route needs a minimum of two luminaires, so no single failure leaves anyone in the dark.
- 03
Verification
Measured performance, not just design calculations.
New in 2025: photometric verification — actually measuring that the system delivers the light levels it was designed to — is required at commissioning and at intervals of no more than five years. A system that passed its design calculations in 2020 now has to prove, with measurements, that it still performs.
- 04
Evidence
The logbook is no longer paperwork. It's the compliance.
Monthly functional tests and annual full-duration tests remain, but the revision raises the bar on records: results documented clearly, tests staggered so the building is never wholly unprotected, handover documentation complete, and any variation from the standard flagged where an inspector can see it.
What this means for the responsible person
Relying on the 2016 edition is now, formally, relying on a withdrawn standard.
Under UK fire safety law, the duty to maintain adequate emergency lighting sits with a named responsible person — and BS 5266-1 is the benchmark inspectors, insurers and courts reach for when judging whether that duty was met.
The 2025 revision widens what "adequate" means and tightens what "evidenced" means. A well-run building in 2016 terms is not automatically a well-run building in 2025 terms.
How EGG Lighting uses it
Tested automatically. Evidenced continuously.
Manual emergency-lighting testing is costly, error-prone, and hardest to evidence at exactly the moment it matters — under audit, after an incident. We think a compliance duty this explicit shouldn't depend on someone remembering to walk the building with a clipboard.
EGG's connected emergency-lighting compliance service runs the testing regime automatically — monthly functional tests, annual duration tests — and generates tamper-proof compliance records per fitting, continuously. The evidence exists before anyone asks for it, rather than being reassembled under pressure.
This isn't a roadmap item. The system is live and operational.
Not sure whether your emergency lighting would stand up to the 2025 revision — or what it would cost to make it?
Start with a Lighting Decision Audit. We'll assess compliance alongside condition, and tell you straight what needs attention and what doesn't.
Conversation, not tender
Start with a conversation.
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