Building regs 12m height+

[Paul1979]

I've seen the following paragraph in a FRA produced last year relating to a health care premises...

"The building is not in excess of 12m in height, therefore three fire compartments are permissible, in excess of that height the building would require to have four fire compartments on all levels above 12m, in line with the requirements of both current Building Regulations and Health Technical Memorandum HTM 05-02".

As the building isn't 12m+ in height it is not a problem on this case; and I have found the paragraph in HTM05-02 which the assessor referred to.

But, my query is that they also refer to this being in current Building Regulations....but I cannot find in Building Regulations (ADB or BS9999) where it states that floors above 12m must have 4 compartments regardless of the building occupancy type?? The only thing I can see is the max. compartment levels in ADB.

Can anyone clarify if this is just a health care premises requirement please??

[Messy]

Off the top of my head is this in connection with progressive horizontal evacuation?

It's widely used across the NHS and is in ADB. It also relies heavily on compartmentation but I am not sure (without looking it up) what the 12m bit is

[bernicarey]

and I have found the paragraph in HTM05-02 which the assessor referred to.

Presumably that was this bit:

Floors over 12 m above ground level
3 .13
Every level over 12 m above ground that contains patient-access areas should be divided into a minimum of four compartments.
Where no hospital street is provided, each compartment should have a minimum floor area of 500 m2 ; where one of the compartments is a hospital street, the area of the hospital street may be less than 500 m2

I think it's probably a Heath Care matter only, because of the way it prefixes "that contains patient-access areas should " and of course it's a 'should' not a 'must', so it's only setting a high benchmark that is the ideal choice.