Rashy Chima-Powney
Business Development Manager for Education (Midlands & The North)
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Escape Door Compliance in Schools
A guide for Headteachers, ensuring your school escape doors are fully compliant with the Fire Safety Order (2005)
Ensure Safe Exits: ABLOY UK’s Guide to Escape Door Compliance
Ensure Safe Exits: ABLOY UK’s Guide to Escape Door Compliance
Is your school’s escape door compliance up to standard? ABLOY UK covers essential Escape Door requirements, common compliance mistakes, and how our assessments and expert support can help you meet BS EN 179, BS EN 1125, BS EN 13637 and FSO standards. Sign up to our instant, on-demand webinar to make sure your escape routes are safe, compliant, and ready in case of emergency.
Are you the responsible person for escape door compliance?
Are you the responsible person for escape door compliance?
The Fire Safety Order (2005) clearly places responsibility for fire safety in a building with the person who has day-to-day control of the premises. In a school that person is often the Head Teacher.
This person may or may not be fully aware of their obligations, or are unfamiliar with the requirements for escape door compliance.
ABLOY UK is here to assist Head Teachers, and or other responsible persons, across the country to better understand their obligations for meeting compliance to the standards, and to outline common breaches of compliance. The standards referenced in the FSO includes, the Escape Door Standards BS EN 179, BS EN 1125, and BS EN 13637.
Student safety must be the priority
Student safety must be the priority
The purpose of an escape door is to allow free egress for ALL persons at ANY time, allowing swift evacuation in the event of an emergency. Escape doors make up a significant proportion of a school's doors - classrooms, offices and final escape doors often form part of the escape route plan.
A basic escape door assessment
A basic escape door assessment
An escape door should be controlled and remain controlled by a mechanical handle or bar mechanism fitted to the door in the direction of escape. If the escape door is fitted with electronic access control, then the mechanical means of escape needs to be maintained. Only the entry side of the door should be electronically controlled.
In short, an escape door should not be fitted with electronically controlled Entry and Exit readers unless compliant to BS EN 13637. Failure to comply, could prohibit escape by persons without a means of operating the doors. It is important to remember, escape doors must always facilitate all persons to exit the building in an emergency.
Safety risk assessments for schools: A guide to fire door quality checks
Safety risk assessments for schools: A guide to fire door quality checks
DfE's Schools Commercial Team provide information and guidance on the importance of checking that fire doors in your school are checked correctly.
Request a free site survey
If the responsible person for escape door compliance within your school would ike to take advantage of a free site survey, please complete this form and one of our experts will contact you.
Contact our experts directly
Paul Nicholas
Business Development Manager for Education (Wales & The South)
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