Waking Watch Costs, Common Alarms and Funding in England

A waking watch is a stopgap, not a fire safety strategy. National Fire Chiefs Council guidance treats it as an immediate interim measure, expects a written transition plan within a month, and expects the building to move off the watch within no longer than six months. It is also the most expensive way to keep a building occupied safely. A common fire alarm almost always costs less, and since 1 April 2026 the Interim Measures Alarm Fund has met the capital cost of installing one in England.

What a Waking Watch Is, and Why It Is Meant to Be Short

A waking watch is a system under which suitably trained people continually patrol a building and its exterior perimeter to detect a fire, raise the alarm and assist with evacuation. It supports a temporary change from stay put to simultaneous evacuation, usually after a fire risk assessment finds a defect affecting compartmentation or the external wall.

The duty behind it sits in article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005: the responsible person must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to relevant persons and review it regularly. A waking watch is one precaution that assessment may call for. It is not a substitute for the assessment, or for repair.

Staffing is not a matter of preference. The guidance sets it by how long it would take to warn everyone who needs to evacuate, judged on the external wall system, the height of the building, the occupancy and any suppression. For a building at the highest level of risk of external fire spread, such as one with a polyethylene core aluminium composite system, the time from detection to alerting all residents and confirming evacuation has started should not generally exceed 10 to 15 minutes.

Timeframes in the Simultaneous Evacuation Guidance, fourth edition, from when the need to change strategy is identified
Stage	What is expected
Immediately	Interim measures begin as soon as the competent person identifies them as necessary.
Transition plan, within a month	A plan with costings, timeframes, resident engagement and procurement.
Transition period, no longer than 6 months	The plan is implemented and the building moves off the watch.
Short term, no longer than 12 months	A longer term remediation plan is formulated and where possible started.
Longer term, 12 months or more	The remediation plan is in place and underway.

A watch running past six months with no documented reason is the first thing a leaseholder challenge will fasten on, and the first thing a fire officer will ask.

What a Waking Watch Actually Costs

The published national dataset comes from MHCLG, which collected data from stakeholders between June and September 2020 and revised the release in March 2021. The department was explicit that the sample was not random, may not be nationally representative, and is not official statistics. The figures are dated, but they remain the published benchmark.

Average monthly waking watch costs reported to MHCLG, data collected June to September 2020
Measure	England	London	Rest of England
Mean, per building	£17,897	£20,443	£15,279
Mean, per dwelling	£331	£499	£179
Median, per building	£11,361	£15,641	£10,929
Median, per dwelling	£137	£256	£116

For a block in Devon or Cornwall the rest of England column is the relevant one. Hourly rates ranged from £12.00 to £30.00 per person, median £13.99, mean £15.88.

Those rates are not the whole bill. MHCLG found commissioning parties also paying for radios, patrolling systems, welfare facilities, mobile unit hire and increased electricity. Reported examples included radios at £6,720 a year, toilet hire at £100 a month, and training at £1,000 to £2,000. Check whether these sit inside the hourly rate or on top of it.

How a Common Fire Alarm Compares on Cost

The comparison is not close. On the MHCLG data, employing one person around the clock exceeds the average cost of installing an alarm within three to seven months, depending on the hourly rate. Most buildings need more than one person, which shortens the payback further.

An industry case study supplied to MHCLG covered a London site of four blocks and 191 dwellings. An alarm across all four was quoted at £96,000 wired and £112,000 wireless, or £504 and £586 per dwelling. Three waking watch quotes, each for two people per block around the clock, all exceeded the wired cost within six weeks.

The specification is set by the guidance, not the installer. The alarm should follow the recommendations of BS 5839-1 for a Category L5 system, except that the sound pressure level inside flats need only be 85 dB(A) at the open doorways of every bedroom, with additional devices for residents who cannot hear it. Category L5 does not itself require break glass call points; where included, the system is properly described as Category M/L5.

The alarm is itself an interim measure, not an alternative to remediation, and it brings testing obligations requiring access into flats. When the building returns to stay put it may have to be removed, so ask whether to specify it for later conversion to a BS 8629 evacuation alert system. Nor does it automatically end all on site presence.

Funding: What Is Available Now

The Interim Measures Alarm Fund is the live scheme. Run by Homes England, published on 1 April 2026 and applying to England only, it meets the reasonable capital cost of installing a common fire alarm to replace, or reduce the need for, waking watch measures.

Eligibility: a building in England, residential or student accommodation, with an external wall appraisal or fire risk assessment identifying the need for an interim measures alarm. Hotels are excluded and no height threshold is set.
Who applies: a responsible entity or responsible person, or an authorised representative. Leaseholders and residents cannot apply.
Funded: components, labour, commissioning and testing, and reasonable upfront capital costs including irrecoverable VAT, plus an alarm capable of upgrade to BS 8629.
Not funded: the waking watch itself, project management fees, maintenance, repair, removal, residual fire wardens, and retrospective costs for alarms already installed.
Quotes must come from an installer on the approved panel, reviewed by Homes England against programme benchmarks.
A building cannot apply if it has already received, or has pending, money from this fund or the Waking Watch Replacement Fund 2022 or 2023.

Conditions attach. Applicants must confirm they have disclosed all remediation or mitigation measures they know of. If a later assessment or fire and rescue service correspondence requires further measures, they must notify the Cladding Safety Scheme and provide plans within 10 business days. Funding may have to be repaid, including where a prohibition notice follows within a year.

The predecessor, the Waking Watch Replacement Fund 2023, was worth £41.71 million, closed to new applications on 31 March 2026 and had its guidance withdrawn on 26 June 2026. It is an England scheme; Wales and Scotland differ.

Who Pays Under the Lease, and the Caps That May Apply

Start with the lease. A waking watch can be a service cost where the lease permits it, through a repairing covenant or a general clause allowing other services for the benefit of tenants. If your lease has no such clause, the cost may not be recoverable at all.

Then check the Building Safety Act 2022 leaseholder protections. Since 31 October 2024, section 120(4A) defines “relevant steps” as steps whose purpose is preventing or reducing the likelihood of a fire or collapse resulting from a relevant defect, reducing its severity, or preventing harm to people. Schedule 8 now treats a “relevant measure” as including a relevant step, so interim measures sit inside these narrow protections.

Relevant building, section 117: a self contained building or part in England with at least two dwellings, and either at least 11 metres high or at least five storeys. Commonhold, enfranchised and leaseholder owned freeholds are excluded.
Qualifying lease, section 119: a long lease of a single dwelling granted before 14 February 2022 with a service charge, where at that date it was the tenant’s only or principal home, or they owned no more than three United Kingdom dwellings including it.
Paragraph 2: nothing is payable where a relevant landlord is responsible for the defect, or associated with the person who is.
Paragraph 4: nothing is payable where the lease was worth less than £175,000 outside Greater London, or £325,000 inside it, valued as at 14 February 2022.
Paragraph 6 and paragraph 7: otherwise the permitted maximum is £10,000 outside Greater London and £15,000 inside it, and relevant service charges falling due in any 12 months are limited to one tenth of it, so £1,000 a year outside Greater London. A lease valued at over £1 million carries a higher maximum.
Paragraph 11 stops the shortfall reaching other leaseholders; paragraph 18 voids agreements purporting to exclude the Schedule.

For a building under 11 metres and under five storeys none of this applies, and the answer turns on the lease and on reasonableness. That is a common position in the South West, where much of the affected stock is low rise.

Section 20 Consultation Is Easy to Miss

Two thresholds bite. A waking watch contract for a term of more than 12 months is a qualifying long term agreement under section 20ZA(2) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and consultation is required once a tenant’s contribution in an accounting period exceeds £100, under regulation 4 of the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003. Installing the alarm is qualifying works, threshold £250.

Without consultation, recovery is limited to the threshold unless the tribunal grants dispensation under section 20ZA(1). Urgency is a good argument for it, but it is an application, not an assumption. Where a fire officer requires a watch to start immediately, start it, then apply.

How Tribunals Have Treated Unreasonable Charges

The reported decision to know is Radcliffe Investment Properties Ltd v Meeson [2023] UKUT 209 (LC), decided on 22 August 2023. Park Rise in Manchester was a 28 metre office building converted in 2018 into 96 flats. On 30 May 2019 a water leak disabled the fire alarm panel. A fire officer found breaches of compartmentation, inadequate fire protection to the lifts and cladding of unknown material, and advised a waking watch with immediate effect. It ran until 20 September 2019 at a cost of £57,894.

The cost first reached leaseholders in February 2021, in a balancing demand for the 2019 service charge year. Leaseholders of 79 of the 96 flats applied to the First-tier Tribunal under section 27A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. The fire authority had already served an enforcement notice on 7 June 2019 recording a breach of article 9, which the landlord did not appeal.

The First-tier Tribunal allowed only £5,859, the cost of the first seven days while the alarm panel was repaired. It found the rest attributable to the acts and omissions of the landlord and its agents over the fire risk assessment, and therefore unreasonable. On appeal the landlord argued that how the need for a cost arose is irrelevant to whether incurring it was reasonable. The Upper Tribunal rejected that as a rule of general application and dismissed the appeal.

Two cautions. This is a fact specific decision, not authority that waking watch costs are never recoverable: nobody argued it was unreasonable to start the watch, and the first seven days were allowed. And section 19(1)(a) sits on top of the contractual question, so a lease that does not permit the charge ends the matter earlier. Where a charge fails that test, the route is an application to the First-tier Tribunal.

The read across is straightforward. Keep the fire risk assessment current, record why the watch was imposed and on whose advice, and document the transition plan. A watch that is proportionate, evidenced and short is defensible; one that runs for years because nobody progressed the alarm is not.

What to Do Next

Confirm the fire risk assessment names the watch, the patrol areas, the frequency and the evacuation timeframe.
Date the start of the watch against the six month expectation, and if you are past it put the reason in writing.
Get alarm quotes from an installer on the fund’s approved panel and apply. The responsible entity or responsible person applies, not leaseholders.
Ask the designer whether to specify the system for later conversion to BS 8629.
Run the section 20 consultation for the alarm works, or apply for dispensation.
Check whether Schedule 8 caps what each leaseholder can be charged before demanding.
Review the fire risk assessment once the alarm is commissioned, so any residual on site presence is justified.

If you want a second opinion on whether a watch is still justified, or on whether an alarm specification and funding application hang together, we provide independent building safety consultancy for buildings under 11 metres and accredited fire door inspections, on a fixed fee agreed in advance and no commission on contractor invoices.

Common Questions

The questions boards ask most often about an existing watch.

How Long Should a Waking Watch Stay in Place?

The Simultaneous Evacuation Guidance expects a plan for moving away from it within a month, and the transition itself as soon as practically possible and within no longer than six months of the risk being identified, other than in exceptional circumstances. A longer term remediation plan should be started, where possible, within 12 months.

Can a Leaseholder Apply for the Interim Measures Alarm Fund?

No. The guidance states that leaseholders and residents cannot apply and should contact the building owner or managing agent. Applications come from a responsible entity or responsible person, or an authorised representative, and evidence of authority is required. For a resident management company, the company itself will usually apply.

Does Installing a Common Alarm Always End the Waking Watch?

Not automatically. The guidance requires the fire risk assessment to be reviewed once the alarm is installed, to determine what interim measures are still required. Where evacuation management personnel are still necessary, the fund will not pay for them, so budget for that separately.

Are Waking Watch Costs Covered by the Building Safety Act Protections?

They can be. Since 31 October 2024, section 120(4A) of the Building Safety Act 2022 defines relevant steps to include measures reducing the likelihood or severity of a fire arising from a relevant defect, and Schedule 8 treats a relevant measure as including a relevant step. Where the block is a relevant building and the lease qualifies, the cap outside Greater London is £1,000 per lease in any 12 months, one tenth of the standard permitted maximum of £10,000. A lease valued at over £1 million carries a higher maximum.

What If We Started the Watch Without Consulting Leaseholders?

Consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 is triggered for a qualifying long term agreement of more than 12 months once a contribution in an accounting period exceeds £100, and for qualifying works once it exceeds £250. Without it, recovery is limited to the threshold unless the tribunal grants dispensation under section 20ZA(1).

Do the Same Rules Apply in Wales and Scotland?

No. The Interim Measures Alarm Fund applies to England only, and the Schedule 8 protections apply to relevant buildings in England. The Fire Safety Order and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 service charge provisions extend to England and Wales, and Scotland has a separate regime.

Sources

Everything above is taken from these, not from a summary of them:

Interim Measures Alarm Fund (IMAF) guidance Homes England (GOV.UK)
Waking Watch Replacement Fund 2023 (withdrawn) GOV.UK
Building Safety Programme: Waking Watch costs MHCLG (GOV.UK)
Simultaneous Evacuation Guidance, fourth edition, 18 August 2022 National Fire Chiefs Council
Radcliffe Investment Properties Ltd v Meeson [2023] UKUT 209 (LC) Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) via Find Case Law
Building Safety Act 2022, Schedule 8 legislation.gov.uk
Building Safety Act 2022, section 120 legislation.gov.uk
Building Safety Act 2022, section 117 legislation.gov.uk
Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 19 legislation.gov.uk
Building Safety Act 2022, section 119 legislation.gov.uk
Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003 legislation.gov.uk
Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 20ZA legislation.gov.uk
Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 27A legislation.gov.uk
Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9 legislation.gov.uk

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