A terraced Victorian house (converted into flats) has an external stairway leading up to the communal entrance on the upper-ground floor.

The stairway has a low banister / wall approx 60cm high. This includes the external entrance landing, from which there is a drop of 10-12 feet to the lower-ground floor below.

I have recommended that additional protection be provided to a height of 1.1m.

However, the tenants have argued this this would mean that the house will not be consistent with the other houses on the street, all of which have the same type of wall / banister. They say that to change it would not be in line with the planning restrictions for this type of Victorian building.

Apparently, most of the buildings on the street are managed by the local council, who clearly do not see the low height to be an issue.

There are some building in the street that have added a single railing, which raises the height to about 95cm. However, this still is low and also leaves a gap of 30-40cm between the wall and the railing, through which a child can climb through.

Is it acceptable to keep the original low wall (or additional inadequate railing), because of the apparent planning restrictions?

Thanks

In England Approved Document K of the Building Regulations covers protection from falling

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protection-from-falling-collision-and-impact-approved-document-k

Building Regulations cover new build and refurbishments and are not retrospective.

When the plans for conversion to flats were presented consideration would have been made by the architect and planning department as to what would be suitable / applicable to meet the regulations at that time.

Most councils operate on-line portals where planning applications can be viewed including drawings and any council comments.

You should start your quest by looking at what was "approved" when the plans were submitted and comparing that to what has been built.

BTW why are you making recommendations on domestic property?

Mosh

Good advice from both Alan and Roundtuit.

A height of about 600mm in the circumstances you describe sounds very unusual.

Typically railings along a terrrace with basement properties or on the railings up to an elevated Ground Floor built in Victorian times would have been designed to be 3 feeet (910mm) high above the adjacent surface whether that be the footpath or the stairs up to the main door.

That circa 900mm might have been compromised since, often by changes to the height of the footpath, particularly since deregulation meant that privatised utilility services could do just about what they wanted to to dig up the footpath than then NOT reinstate like for like.

....or in the case of the street where I live, at one point the Council decided to give us stone slabs, but instead of doing a full or partial reconstruction of the "pavement" from which the footpath was constructed they, in effect laid the slabs on top of what was already there, with the result that the footpath height was a bit higher and hence the height of the railings reduced.

The height of 3 feet was written into edge protection requirements in plenty of legislation, and would have been appropriate when most people were a bit less tall than they became some generations later - when the magic number was increased to 1100mm, but NOT retrospectively.

There is a very good chance that the terrace you are referring to is either Listed and/or in a Conservation Area, and if so that there will be Planning restrictions on what can and cannot be done.

Can cause difficulties. A recent Listed Building application in our street included for a new staircase from street level to the basement flat. 

So, the edge protection for the new staircase HAS to be a minimum of 1100mm height, because it is new and so the minimum permitted by Building Regs requiremets - inevitable clash where that meets existing railings at a height of 900mm or even less.

Could get round this. An 1880 terrace with 20 "townhouses" mostly converted into flats as in your scenario.

So, I suppose they COULD reconfigure the entire footpath to be lower so that the existing railings are 1100mm above the footpath.

Is the applicant for one basement flat, so one of over 100 properties in the street going to offer to pay for the reconstruction of the entire footpath? Probably not!

Is a cash strapped Council going to spend money on doing this? Probably not.

...and were anyone to do this, would they then need to do the same for the other two terraces in our roughly triangular street, and those nearby? - ALL in a Conservation Zone, some Listed.

There comes a point where a pragmatic position that is broadly sympathetic to heritage comes into play.