GuidanceFire doors, October 2026
Fire doors in schools: why they only work closed
Fire Door Safety Week ran from 21 to 25 September under the line check it, close it. It is the whole job in three words.
A fire door holds fire and smoke back for as long as it is rated to, and for no time at all if it is standing open or will not latch. Everything else about it, the certification, the ironmongery, the seals, only matters once it is shut.
What usually fails
The closer, first. A door that stops an inch short, bounces off the latch or needs a shove is not closing. Then the gaps, which should be consistent and around the thickness of a pound coin. Then the seals, which get painted over, peel away or go missing after a repair. Then the hinges, and any screw that has worked loose.
The ones that get missed
Cupboards and stores, plant rooms, the kitchen, and any door onto a stair that has been rehung or had a new lock fitted. Doors held open on a wedge or an extinguisher count too. Where a door genuinely needs to stand open, a device that releases on the alarm does the job properly and takes the argument away.
The easy bit
Anyone can check whether a door closes. Open it to forty five degrees, let go and watch. That one test finds most of the faults.
An inspection is not the assessment
The fire risk assessment looks at the doors as part of the whole building. A fire door inspection is a separate, closer look at each door in turn, and it is what produces a defect list somebody can actually work from. Schools vary on how often that runs, which is worth a conversation rather than an assumption.
When a door is waiting on a repair
A door that cannot be made to work today still has to be managed today. Where a closer has failed or a leaf is damaged, the sensible interim is to keep the door shut, take whatever was holding it open out of the room, and let staff know why. Where that is not workable because of how the space is used, ask your fire risk assessor, because the answer may be a different control rather than a wedge.
What a good door looks like
- Closes fully from any angle and engages the latch on its own.
- Gaps even, and around the thickness of a pound coin.
- Intumescent strips and smoke seals present, unbroken and not painted over.
- Hinges sound, screws tight, no missing fixings.
- No wedges, and nothing propping it open.
- Any defect reported and given a date, rather than left on a list.
How we help
We inspect fire doors door by door, record every defect with a photograph and a priority, and bring the findings into the fire risk assessment.
General guidance only. It does not replace the fire risk assessment, water hygiene risk assessment or specific advice for a particular building.
