Bars on bedroom window

Shield

One for the Fire & Rescue experts:

A thread was started yesterday asking whether it was legal to have unremovable bars on the windows of a domestic house. The bars are on the window of the bedroom the OP is renting and he is quite rightly concerned about his escape route in the event of a fire.

Would anyone who has experience and knowledge in this area kindly post on that thread with a conclusive answer, or post here and I'll move the answer across.

Thanks guys.

civdef

In general, fire safety legislation doesn't apply to domestic dwellings.
People are free to do all sorts of stupid things in their own home.
From a Building Regulations point of view, some second floor bedroom windows and




third floor windows generally need to be openable. This would only apply to building a new house or selling an existing house though.

It would be legal to put the bars on your own house that you're living in, but very silly. A tenant would be within their rights to have them removed, as it is a threat to their safety.
This would some down to a civil matter though, and would not be directly covered by fire safety legislation.
If the building was an apartment it would be a different matter.

areaman

Hi, happened to see this old thread. There are fire safety regulations concerning domestic dwellings which are part of the building regulations which must be adhered to in new dwellings. Means of escape from bedroom windows are an important part of this and covered in the voluminous tGD Part B. However, these regulations apply to new works and alterations to existing structures, things in place prior to the enactment of the building regulations are generally not covered. However, if a house is rented then there may be other regulations covering min safety standards like fire alarms ect. The rental tenancy board could be the place to look for that sort of thing.

BrianD

Bars on the lower floor windows of Georgian buildings in Dublin are very common and I've often wondered what the legal status. Looking across the road from me nearly all the lower floors have bars that are embedded into the masonry.

Run_to_da_hills

My old man bought a Victorian house in the early 1970's the first thing that ended up in the skip were all the bars from the basement windows.