New to Commercial Advice on Fire exits

[Lidia]

:o Hi
I would be most grateful if anyone could answer the following question that I have. I have recently acquired a property which is split into residential and commercial. The ground floor is a shop, which I hope to lease out and the upstairs is a flat on 2 floors. What I want to know is, if the shop downstairs is to be leased, to be used as an office, do I have to provide a fire exit to the rear of the property.

At present the office does have a door onto the corridor which would be shared between the tenants upstairs and this leads to the rear door. Could I close the entrance off and just have as their only entrance and exit the front door? All the doors downstairs are firedoors.

I would be most grateful for any replies which you think may be of any help to me.

[Editor]

The only way to be sure on this is to bring-in your local authority building inspector/fire officer.
Local authorities seem to have their own ideas on this and of course it's open to the building inspector's own interpretation of the building regs - some can go really OTT.
My approach would be try to arrange a visit with both building inspector and fire officer present at the same time: get them both to agree on a sensible course of action.