a HOSPITAL HAS ONLY ONE FIRE ESCAPE IN A WARD OF 14 BEDS APPROX 20 METRES IN LENTGH TO THE FIRE ESCAPE. If structural work is carried out would an additional fire escape at 45 degrees need to be made to comply with modern regs

First of all i would like to point out that fire safety in healthcare premises is not the book you go off in the NHS. the books we use are a part b building regs and also the firecode in this instance HTM 05-02 chapter 5.33 the building regs would point out table d1 page 131 that the hospital is class 2a institutional then go to page 37 table 3 limitations of travel distance this will point out that the traval distance for a class 2 a institutional is 9metres in a single direction however this is prefixed to note 2, note 2 informes a person that If provision for means of escape is being made in a hospital or other health care building by following the detailed guidance in the relevant part of the Department of Health “Firecode”, the recommendations about travel distances in the appropriate “Firecode” document should be followed. the relevent firecode guidance is HTM 05-02 chapter 5.33 which states that (not as pointed out abouve) that the traval distance is as follows 5.33 The maximum travel distance before there is a choice of escape routes should be no more than 15 m for in-patient accommodation or 18 m for all other parts of healthcare buildings. as this is a 14 bedded ward i would seriously contacting your competant fire safety adviser who should put in extra procedures especially if this is an orthopedic ward or elderly were the patients will be bed ridden on waking up should there be an incident. a yard is a yard but to extand a travel distance by a quarter is asking for trouble. when its a single escape route also when it comes to SFAIRP it does not hold always in a hospital environment due to the vulnerability of the patients what about false bulkheads tarpaulins, tunnals loss of flooring during an emergency as persons get out, removal of fire load etc like i say there is alot to look at, in the past we have even had to close or get extra staff or even add extra sub compartmentation