Fire authority objections

[vsinghwalia]

• The internal stairway discharges into the ground floor commercial area and the travel distances are excessive. The escape route would quickly become impassable in the event of fire originating in the basement, ground or first floor

• The structure between the basement, ground and upper floors provides insufficient fire and smoke protection. This would allow heat and smoke from fire to pass from the basement to the floors above

• The external fire exit does not have sufficient fire resisting construction from a fire originating in the building.

 

Would anyone be able to help us suggest ideas on how we can prevent the above for our shop. We use to have the shop as off liscence and never faced these problems before but after converting our shop to hot food(fish and chips) we were hit with these objections. Any help would be great.

[Lyledunn]

You don’t say how these FRS objections arose, perhaps as part of your change of use application to Building Control, however, they are at the top end of serious. It is apparent that you need to employ professional assistance immediately. If people sleep on the premises, I would advise seeking alternative accommodation urgently. 

[vsinghwalia]

The fire authority sends these objections but doesn't tell you how to resolve them? Is it not their responsibility to tell us exactly what we need to ammend in detail to resolve this issue?

[AnthonyB]

No - It is your legal responsibility if carrying out a change of use or alteration subject to Building Regulations to demonstrate how the work will comply with the fire safety aspects of the Regulations.

Even where the Building Regulations aren't involved it is your responsibility to have completed Fire Risk Assessments and implemented general fire precautions based on that assessment, the Fire Service's role is to enforce, not tell you what to do as that's what your Fire Risk Assessment is for.

None of these requirements are new, they are principles that have existed for decades, it's just that as a small premises it will have escaped scrutiny in the past and it's caught up with you unfortunately. In essence you are looking at structural fire protection - such as fire resistant glazing next to external stairs, underdrawing of the floors with fire resistant boarding to either 30 minutes or 60 minutes depending on the use of the upper floors and enclosing the stair in fire resisting construction and terminating it in a final exit door to the outside or a protected corridor to an existing exit.  

The fact this has only been brought up after you have completed your conversion implies you haven't gone through the Planning Permission & Building Control Approval that would be required for the change from from use class E to “sui generis” because if you had this should have been raised well before you completed the works.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/people-with-duties-under-fire-safety-laws

 

[Lyledunn]

………it's caught up with you unfortunately…..

I know it’s only a turn of phrase but it is rather the opposite in my view.! Perhaps you are very fortunate indeed that FRS has identified these issues. If some fire incident had occurred  that resulted in injury or death, you would rightly feel the full force of the law, let alone the moral guilt.