In our office we have two doors, a single door out to a fire stairs and the back of the building and double doors out to the front of the building. The double doors are the main doors used.

If there was a fire we would use the double doors unless circumstances dictated otherwise.

Our office is on the first floor and there are normally five people in the office plus the occasional member of staff dropping in.

The double doors are not very well fitted and are draughty. A member of staff sits by them and becomes very uncomfortable each time the door is opened. We think this could be reduced if we could fix a slide bolt to one of these doors and just use the other.

I would appreciate some expert thoughts on whether locking one of these double doors would compromise our Health or safety.

Members of the public do not come into the office, and expense is the main reason why we have come up with this solution.

The double doors open onto a narrow corridor and through a single door down the stairs, so having a double door wouldn't help to evacuate the room any quicker.

Have I just answered my own question?

No all occupied by the one company, it's a shop and warehouse downstairs, offices upstairs.

Nothing exciting happens in our office, just the usual photocopying, emailing and eating biscuits......

(Thanks for helping Smurf!)

The door in the corridor opening onto the stairs is a proper fire door and we keep that one closed.

The double doors to the office are swing doors so when someone walks in they whoosh around a bit causing a killer draught for the lady who sits near them.

The building is around 30 to 35 years old. These doors are about 10 years old.

I wondered if there would be a problem in keeping one of these bolted shut to minimise the draught? It would reduce the width of the egress from the office to taht of a normal sized single door.

The offices have been here around 9 years , the shop and warehouse were here a couple of years before that.

We are an electrical retailers, I am not sure what you mean by density, the warehouse sadly isn't as full as it used to be due to the current economic climate, and we store our stock mainly in boxes on palletts. Sometimes the stock are piled two high, depending on the product.

We did have a visit from the Fire Brigade a couple of months ago, and they didn't seem to have a problem with the doors as they are, however their visit was a casual familiarisation visit.

Thanks very much for your advise, Badger and Smurf.

It is very much appreciated.

Quite simple really. In the event of a fire you would assume the worst case scenario and assume the largest exit is obstructed by the fire, in this case the double door. You are now reliant on the remaining exit to have sufficient exit capacity for all the occupants. If this is sufficient then all you have to do is make sure that the width of the double door is not made to be less than the width of the other exit door.