Door at top of loft stairs - building regulations?

conmcb

AZF41263 - Very interested in your ‘door-at-top-of-stairs’ post. What was the final distance between your top step and the inward opening door in the end? I’m doing 3 steps from landing into bedroom before inward opening door and I don’t want to lose too much bedroom...

DevilDamo

The depth of the landing has to be at least as wide as the stair. With doors that open onto a stair/landing, this is allowed providing a min. gap of 400mm is provided between the leading edge of the door and stair riser.

samwardill

azf41263 said:

My architect suggested the same thing, that an inward opening door adjacent to the top step of a staircase is in breach of building regs because it is less than 400mm from the top step. However, he was WRONG. This is a MISinterpretation of Part K of the Building Regulations. As the original poster quite rightly suggested, Part K 1.18 refers to 400mm clearance for doors opening OUTWARDS across a landing, NOT doors opening inwards away from a landing. As one of the respondents pointed out, Part K 1.16 stipulates a staircase must have a landing as long as the staircase is wide. However, it DOES NOT say there can’t be a door opening off that landing. (As a point of academic interest, Part K DOES NOT stipulate a minimum stair width, so you could have a staircase as narrow and a landing as short as your heart desires, although that wouldn’t be very practical 😉). Local Authority Building Control confirmed my architect was wrong and approved my plans with an INWARD opening door off the landing adjacent to the top stair and less than 400mm from the top stair.

My local building control inspector agrees with this interptretation but I'm really struggling to get my architect to do a drawing complying with what the building control inspector says she will approve!