planning regulations - any advice

[mrsleomcgary]

DH and I bought my parents house from them 6 months ago. We're doing work but for the moment at least it's purely cosmetic.

However,back in the early-mid 90s mum and dad had to apply for retrospective planning permission to convert the attic into a bedroom as when they converted it they didn't know planning permission was required. As part of the consent all the doors were changed to fire doors with those things on them that mean they close themselves once pushed opened.

Now we have the house and a1 year old who is just starting to walk. I want to change the doors back to normal,or at least remove the self closing things. The doors are heavy and if one of them was to come of the stopper we use for them and close on her she would be seriously injured. Does anyone know,if we removed them would we a)need to notify the council as the house would no longer meet the planning regs and b)would it invalidate our home insurance. The house is 3 storey and the doors fireproof,as part of the planning consent they had to be fitted.

I think it's building regulations you need to speak to rather than planning. I think it would be wise for insurance purposes to have something in writing from them. I believe self-closing doors are no longer required by building regs following a loft conversion but I think the fire doors will need to remain, for insurance reasons if nothing else. This is my interpretation of the regulations I've read online. You might want to wait for a reply from someone with 'real world' experience.

We removed ours for this exact reason. I hadn't thought about the insurance implications though, bug also understood they were no longer required for building control purposes. We had them permanently wedged open which I felt was more of a fire risk.

Have you got mains wired smoke alarms? Building regs now lets you have mains wired smoke alarms in every room (heat detector in kitchen) on every floor of house instead of self closing doors. So think you would be okay to swap for that but would be worried about insurance in event of a fire if you took fire door closers off.