Guides · 5 min read
Building an evidence pack
A folder of current documents proves what is true today. A pack proves what was true on the day you handed it over, which is the thing usually in dispute.
Most of a pack is not documents
A fire authority pack is the risk assessment plus fifty-two weeks of alarm tests, the extinguisher certificates, the proportion of staff trained as wardens, and the actions raised and closed. Four of those five are rows in a system, not files, and they are the parts that get summarised badly.
Rows have to be frozen to be evidence
A list of record identifiers is not evidence, because the records keep changing afterwards. Rendering each set of rows to a dated document — this is the alarm test log as it stood on 14 March — is what makes it provable. The render is immutable in a way the underlying data never is.
Pin the versions
A pack should record exactly which version of each document went into it, and ideally which pages it occupies. "The fire risk assessment" is ambiguous a year later when there have been three. "Version 4, pages 12 to 31" is not.
Refuse rather than drop
If something cannot be included, the pack should fail to build rather than quietly omit a page. A pack that is silently missing a document is the worst possible artefact to hand to an inspector, because everybody involved believes it is complete.
Keep the pack
Once handed over, it is a record of what you asserted on a date. Keep it as it was. Rebuilding it later with corrected data produces a different document, and having two versions of a pack in circulation is its own problem.
This guide describes what organisations are commonly asked for. It is not legal advice and it is not a statement of what your organisation must do — that depends on your premises, your activities and your own assessment, and it is a question for you and your adviser. The regime pages linked below name the legislation so you can read the source.