fire escape locked shut while staff are inside.

[firequestion]

I work in a large shop and once the store is shut to the public we stay after work to make sure the shop is ready for the next day.

The doors to the shop are locked and at some point someone goes round locking the fire escapes.

This means that all means of escape are locked and one person there has the keys.

Even though the time everything is locked is short as in under an hour I don't feel like this is acceptable.

Can anyone let me know about the law regarding this?

As far as I am concerned it is unsafe and according to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 "You should be able to use fire exit doors and any doors on the escape routes without a key and without any specialist knowledge."

This has now been reported but i would like to know about any other points i should mention as i am going to go into a meeting about this.

Any replies are appreciated

[Adrian Lancs]

I am not a fire specialist although have done fire RA's for our buildings and liaised with members of the fire service in terms of walkrounds and compliance.

We have several fire doors on our main unit and whilst 2 of them have external locks, they are all operable from the inside at all times. They remain secure from the outside so no need for additional locking procedures which makes your system seem a little odd although I have seen fire doors chained locked overnight at a well know eating establishment and at breakfast time one was still chained up which I mentioned and it was subsequently unchained.............

[Messy]

This is not a safe practice or perhaps a legal one

In a large shop, it is often the case that the long bank of doors at the front or rear are needed for the sheer number of occupants at peak times. Out of hours when just a few staff are left, it is possible to lock these doors, but some arrangements must be available to allow staff to escape at all times.

In some dept stores, a security officer will stand by the only door which is left unlocked, or a key would be left in a exit door. It is vital that the number and location of these 'staff exits' is sufficient in terms of travel distances - but above all, this interim means of escape system is clearly communicated to staff

You are right to report this practice and demand a safe system.

[firequestion]

Thank you all for your replies to this post.

I agree with someone with a key manning the exit. But this wasn't the case and also nothing was communicated to the staff.

I will come back to this forum with the results of the meeting, so in future anyone else with the same concern can find it on google.

[witsd]

I used to work in a large, five storey squarish branch of a popular food and clothing retailer.

In addition to the front and back glass doors, there were four staircases that could be accessed on every floor, but needed to be locked when the store was unmanned from Saturday night until Monday morning, and they made the unfortunate choice of asking me to do this task along with being the fire, health and safety officer for the building.

After a lot of complaining about us either finishing too late or not giving the cleaners enough time, we eventually settled on locking two staircases, leaving two diagonally opposite exits available until the last minute, and then locking these from the top down as the cleaners left the building.

Similarly on the rare occasions that staff came in on a Sunday, we would open two staircases prior to any other workers setting foot on the sales floor.

It wasn't as efficient as the managers would have liked, but it made sure that everyone could get out if they needed to.

[benstacey]

All fire exits must be unlocked while people are still in the building. Can the fire exits be opened from the outside? if so there is no need for them to be locked until the building is empty.

If the door needs to be locked there are a couple of fairly simple solutions which could help, The most expensive would be installing magnalocks, which have a push to open button by the side which can be connected to the fire alarm to unlock when the alarms go off, this would be costly at first, but would be a big help for both fire safety and security.

Cheapest solution would be a 'Break Glass for key' box next to the door or a combination lock box on the wall which could be put near the door which holds the key.

Maybe suggest that the building gets a Fire Risk Assessment from an external party to make sure you are compliant with current regulations.

[Messy]

Cheapest solution would be a 'Break Glass for key' box next to the door or a combination lock box on the wall which could be put near the door which holds the key.

Take care with this solution:

The OP says this is a large shop, so a key in a box may not be suitable. It depends on the amount of staff and the contents of the shop, but key-in-box solutions are generally only acceptable for very low risk premises

As for the combination lock box, this would definitely would not be compliant!! The idea of staff fiddling around trying to remember the combination code whilst under pressure makes this measure (IMO) totally unsuitable in any premises. This would not even be acceptable in secure mental health and custodial type premises (prisons and Police Stations) - where exit doors are permitted to be locked

Benstacey: Have you seen or advised on combination lock boxes for final exit lock? In the interests of CPD, I would be very interested to understand more about how such a system could be justified and in what circumstances. Thanks

[toecutter]

I used to work in an airport, and on fire exits leading either to the apron or that breached the Security Critical Area, we had glass bolts and the doors were connected to the fire alarm system. It suited our needs, and we'd assessed it as appropriate to the risk level, although from what I heard the HSE don't exactly encourage the use of glass bolts.