I agree that you ground floor flats you should be able to escape through a window if there in a kitchen fire between your bedroom and the front door. There are however guidelines about window apertures for this purpose and it may be that your current windows may have too small an aperture or it might be too high to easily get out of. Personally I would be requesting a site visit from building control since their advice three years ago led to you being in this situation. I would be looking for them to explicitly give you your options to resolve this and it might be that there are several possible solutions.

Hi Susi, Unfortunately, you need to keep the door. It is the case of having the hall and staircase secure from fire from any of the adjoining rooms. The door should be an F20 door. In the most cases, you can find the badge on the small strips towards the hinges. You can change the opening position if you'd like. I'd recommend you to change the hinge position an to the other side and open the door into the hall. So you can leave it open and it is not going to be in you way. I hope that helps. If you have more questions, please let me know. Best Eva

You need to have a fire protected route. There are a few ways to do that. It is possible to create this as a more open plan look but it will be more expensive than just keeping the stair enclosed and having a door from the hall to the living/dining rooms. So it depends on your budget and how valuable it is to you to have that feel more open and spacious. Your options are: 1. enclose the staircase with adequate fire protecting walls and doors 2. open up and use a mechanical system to provide fire protection 3. enclose the staircase as in option 1 but use fire rated glass to the stair to give an open look. However fire rated glass is really expensive! If you want to go down a more complex fire protection route then I would recommend that you speak with a fire engineer who could design and spec the system for you. You might be able to use a fire blanket or a sprinkler system. I believe that the costs of sprinkler systems has come down a lot recently, and they do seem to be becoming more used in private residential, though still fairly unusual. I've not seen fire blankets used in houses, but I used to include them a lot in commercial and community building projects.

A quick call to the buildings regs at your council will put your mind at rest but basically I think you are right and I suspect you are a ground floor flat too and the regs are more relaxed if you can escape through a window.