Looking at a cottage with loft room

[SquinkiesRule]

I was wondering if a loft that is open (no door) can be classed as a bedroom. We are looking at a cottage that is for sale, it has tow bedrooms and bathroom on one floor and then another staircase up to a finished loft with velux windows and has a bed in it. In thr EA description it calls it a loft bedroom.
Will this be counted as a bedroom really? Should it have a fire door on the bottom of the stairs or something, should I run like the wind and look at something else?
We are looking at it again tomorrow, I wanted to ask more about the loft. I'm starting to wonder if it's had planning permission, needs a door, will cause any problems down the road. It wasn't added by the present owner, it was there when they bought 2 years ago.
Other than that we love the house, big kitchen, and dining room, new bathroom and a small living room with a working feature fireplace.

It will depend on the permissions it had. Ask a lot of questions when you visit :).

I'm renting a 2-bed place where the second bedroom is up a staircase with no door at either end. It's fine but I am a bit afraid of falling down the stairs in a sleep fog.

I'm starting to wonder about homeowners insurance and if the house will be covered properly with an open loft bedroom.

You can get insurance for just about anything. May affect the price: no idea as it's not my problem here.

It will depend on how it was done and when it was done. Current fire regs mean there have to be fire doors etc but it didn't used to be that way. The main thing is to find out if the joists were properly reinforced for use as a room, anything else is pretty easy to fix.

Its sounds like the existing owners have converted the loft without obtaining building regulation approval. If there is no appropriate fire protection the conversion could be perveived by building control as dangerous and you might be asked to make improvements. In these circumstances a fire door and mains connected smoke alarm system is essential anyway as there is a real risk to occupants of the top room in the event of fire.

If it only sold 2 years ago the vendor should still have paperwork relating to the conversion , even if that is an indemnity policy . At very least buildings regs would be a query (fire exit, staircase, fire-retardant materials and doors etc) although may not have needed pp. It may well have been up to the spec at the time it was done so doesn't need upgrading to current regulations.

OK. We have a bedroom like this. It was converted about 5 years ago from an existing loft room (one window at the end, very steep open staircase). We put in a proper staircase with a turn in it and velux windows as well as insulation, reinforcing floor etc. We were told we didn't need planning permission, just building regs approval. Each building inspector who came to see it had a different opinion, but we finally had the head of building inspection (or whatever his title was) out and he said that as long as it was an improvement to an existing room and not a new conversion, we didn't need the fireproof door and required head height (which is something daft like 6'2) at the top of the stairs. He did advise smoke alarms though.

It has just been pointed out that it was done in the summer of 2011 - obviously just feels like five years

I don't know when building regs first required fire doors giving a protected route in 3-storey buildings but it must be more than 20 years.

Work that is not BRs compliant in one respect is very likely to be non compliant in other, less visible respects as well. It is common for insulation and floor-strengthening to be omitted to cut costs. Ripping it out and doing it properly would cost more than the original conversion.