My understanding has always been no, they not not require to be closed at all times nor self closing. There may be other considerations such as security for example which the business may factor in, but from a purely safety perspective no, as long as the door is wide enough, lit and opens in the direction of travel immediately when required you should be fine. Self-closure and leaving open is more important for internal fire doors as they form part of a compartment which should provide fire and smoke resistance for a prescribed period of time. Couple of other things to bear in mind would be emergency lighting and ideally there should not be a step down immediately after exiting through the door, but I digress

Yup, as long as the people can get out of it safely the door can be open, John

There is an enforcing authority?

Unless it is on to an external fire escape then it is yes,

The problem is Chas you are your kid 'won't stop talking why don't you give it a rest' well it is Friday.

Not so sure about the above, internal fire exits cannot be left open. There are fire exits and final fire exits. A fire door may or may not be a fire exit.

Is there any such thing as an 'internal exit' I thought they were just fire does on an exit route. The signs are only leading to the final exit door.

FS101 I dont think Andy means the roller shutter will be used as the final exit door, but that roller shutters are allowed at final exits in certain circumstances As he says "and sufficient management procedures are in place to ensure they are not closed when the building is occupied or that suitable and sufficient alternative final exit doors are also available on that specific elevation for when they are" One point of order: To comply with BS5839, manual call points are required from every exit from the premises, whether they are designated fire exits or not. This is because the BS recognises that people will use any door (including wick doors, loading bays and similar non-fire exits) during an evacuation

They can if they are held open by a system that will release on the activation of the fire alarm.

Agreed it is a fire door on an exit route.

From Safety Smurf: "It's only a fire exit if opens directly to the outside of the building. Otherwise, its a fire door (which may or may not be along an escape route)." I thought I understood this until I looked at the fire exit doors in my large open plan office. The door to the fire escape stairs is labelled fire exit door. It does not lead directly to the outside, but to a stair well that itself eventually leads to the outside. So now I’m thinking a ‘Fire Door’ is one that is able to hold back a fire, hence the rating on these doors, and the exhortation to keep then shut. (Unless there is a closing mechanism.) It does not have to lead to a means of escape. A fire exit door leads to a means of escape from the building, not necessarily to the final door to the outside. These of course can also be ‘Fire Doors’ in the sense that they can hold back a fire, and indeed they are capable of doing this. I think the outside door is just a door to the outside used to get out of the building in case of fire. It can be kept open since it is not designed to hold back a fire (not in any circumstances I can envisage anyway), and as such may not actually be a ‘Fire Door’. Err, well this makes sense to me anyway.

A fire exit should lead you to a place of relative safety, which may still be in the building, for example a protected stairwell/lobby. A final fire exit will lead to a place of total safety, normally outside the building. Fire doors may/may not be on an emergency escape route, for example, on an electrical cupboard to prevent/minimise the spread of fire and or smoke.

It is true actually, fire doors are internal. A fire exit leads out of a building. Its not rocket science.

It's the new RIDDOR!

Plus... internal fire doors are normally labelled FIRE DOOR KEEP SHUT......not FIRE EXIT keep shut lol External Exits are normally labelled FIRE EXIT KEEP CLEAR.....simples