Do my windows have to open wide enough to escape from in a fire?

The rule exists because an inner room or an upper-floor bedroom can be cut off from the stairs by a fire below, and the window then becomes the way out for the occupants and the way in for a firefighter. Whether your house is required to have one depends on when it was built or altered and how the escape route works, but whether you can actually get out of the window is worth checking either way.

Safety

Step by step

1. Understand what makes a window an escape window.It is not simply an opening window. There are requirements for the clear openable area once the sash is out of the way, for the minimum dimension in each direction so a person can pass through, and for the height of the cill above the floor so it can be reached and climbed to. All three have to be satisfied together.
2. Check where the requirement bites in your house.It typically applies to habitable rooms on upper floors and in loft conversions where the escape route from that room is not otherwise protected, and to inner rooms in certain arrangements. It also normally applies to a ground floor habitable room in an inner-room arrangement.
3. Check the guidance for your nation.Building regulations are devolved and the specific figures and arrangements differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and they have changed over time. Look up the current guidance rather than relying on a figure quoted anywhere, including here.
4. Understand what triggers the requirement.It applies to new build and to work carried out under building regulations — a loft conversion, a material alteration, and in many cases the replacement of windows themselves. Replacing a window in a room that had an escape window normally means the replacement must also be one.
5. Check the hinges, not just the opening size.An ordinary side-hung casement's own frame blocks part of the opening. Escape windows generally use egress or 'fire escape' hinges that let the sash swing right out of the way, which is a different part from a standard friction stay.
6. Test your own escape windows physically.Go to each upstairs bedroom, open the window fully, and look at whether an adult could actually get through it. Then do it in the dark. This is the check that matters and it takes five minutes.
7. Sort out restrictors and keys sensibly.Child-safety restrictors on an escape window must be the type that can be released quickly from inside without a tool. Locking handles need their key hanging by the window, in the same place, every time — not in a drawer downstairs.
8. Think about what is below the window.An escape window that opens above a conservatory roof, a glazed canopy or a set of railings is much less useful. It is worth knowing which of your windows is the sensible one, and that is a family conversation, not a regulation.
9. Put it in the escape plan.Whether a window is required to be an escape window or not, everybody in the house should know which windows open widest, where the keys are, and where they would go. That is worth more than the paperwork.

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