kitchen open to stairs?

[mogga]

shows kitchen open to the stair well. Is that allowed?

[Tim Watts]

mogga ( [e-mail]) wibbled on Tuesday 01 February 2011 08:38:

My stairs are just round the corner from the kitchen - and open.

One old cottage I looked at had the kitchen in the hall by the stairs so the kitchen could be converted into the only inside bathroom!

[dom]

habitable rooms leading off from it have means of escape windows.

But IIRC - those habitable rooms must be less than 4.5m above ground level.

As this flat seems to be much higher - I'd expect that there would have to be a protected route.

The kitchen and stairway must be being considered "as one" as the protected route from the flat to an exit door to the building.

Actually - it does seem a bit odd that a kitchen is allowed to be part of the route - I thought they had to be routes only, and not be usable as rooms.

Maybe there's an emergency door to a neighbouring flat - that doesn't show on the estate agent details.

[Jonathan]

It depends on when it was done. Building regs are not retrospective.

Jonathan

[mogga]

The flat has just been modernised by the looks of it.

[Jonathan]

--

agree but from my experience if the interior is not structurally changed in terms of layout, building regs can't make you change it to bring it up to modern standards. We had a flat that we modernised whose escape route was through the kitchen and were told that they couldn't make us change it. We did in the end because we were horrified by the statistics on house fires. Most start in kitchens.

Jonathan

[GMM]

Interesting point: I was just looking at a prospect which has just that 'feature' - open stairs leading from the kitchen. Couldn't quite decide if I thought it was dodgy but this thread has made my mind up!

[Hugo Nebula]

But was the layout altered? If the layout has been altered more than 3 years previously, then enforcement action cannot be taken (except in rented properties under different legislation).

There's a whole world out there between 'allowed' and 'enforced'. I would imagine significant swathes of London and other cities have unauthorised flat conversions, alterations, etc. that have never come to light.