Fire doors, areas of special fire risk and corridor lengths

[helenfs71]

Can anyone give me some general advice on acceptable travel distance in school corridors. I have a building built in aprproximatley 1990 which has two large open plan cloakrooms (signifciant fire loading) with two adjacent rooms -breakout rooms/offices (you would have to pass through the cloakroom to exit the building) onto two long 30/35 metre plus open corrridors to final exits with no fire breaks.

I have read the tables in building regs and understand there are vairous  travel distance anyway in low/medium and high risk corridors with numebr of directiosn of travel i.e. 18 metres and 9 metres etc, etc.  although they would not have applied at the time when built. I have read BB100 and the areas of special fire risk and the particuar cicumstances. Previous risk assessment states compartmentalise off and replace some sliding doors with self-closing doors and whole sectiosn of glazing which are not used and have left it open plan intentionally when built.

The corrdiors predominantly service classroom which have their own external final fire exits at the back of every classroom. What would you do to reduce the risk if anything?

School want to put in addtional fire breaks close to the cloakroom (less costly) that compartmentalising the cloakroom  entirely as an area of secial fire hazard.

[AnthonyB]

Both BB100 & Building Regs are for designing new builds and not always fully applicable to existing builds. Earlier schools will have followed the many editions over the years of BB7 and the risk assessment guide for existing schools is here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/14887/fsra-educational-premises.pdf