Posted By Penfold
Happy Friday everyone.

I am advising a high street office at the moment and have come across a roof fire escape that leads to a ladder to a back ally. I have 3 questions I am hoping you good people can point me in the right direction:

Does a fixed ladder need any kind of documented maintenance? (It looks sturdy enough to me!!)

How do they stop the local kids using the roof as a meeting place? There is evidence of this due to dog ends and take away packets. The staff regularly have to go out onto this roof and clear this up.

Finally, in terms of litigation, what is the consequences of one of these kids falling off the roof? Has this company done enough to prevent such an accident?

Thanks if anyone can help

Posted By Penfold
DPK. You make a valid point, and I am not disagreeing with you. If that is what I need to advise, then I will look up the reference an approved document B and advise. However, before I do this, I would like to keep this open for some more discussion:

This is an escape route from a relatively unused area of a building (1st floor kitchen). If used, it would only be by ambulant members of staff that "may" be in the kitchen at the time. I would not like to remove this means of escape without good reason.

My guess it has been in place from the year dot. The previous FRA just mentions this as an alternative means of escape.

The main staircase from the upper floor discharges into an occupied area so no protected escape route to a final exit. To remove the roof escape, they would have to convert some of the retail area into a protected corridor, not only costing £££'s, but loosing prime high street space. This seems excessive.

There is a good fire alarm in this building regularly checked and maintained. Staff drilled etc.