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Musical H&S


Automat!c

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Good Afternoon , I am involved on putting on a musical in a school hall , the thing is health and safety concerns , It houses around 300 seats. Its got three double fire exits in the hall , plus the main entrance where the audience uses.There is a two double fire doors with curtains across it on downs stage left in front of the pros arch one in front of the other. The other double fire doors again with a pull along curtain across the frame DSR . . My concern is the orchestra is along the stage left of the stage and goes across the first double fire door . The students uses the other fire door on DSL in front of the orchestra as an exit and entrance ,,,, Meaning there is two double fire doors which are accessible if there is an evacuation is this ok to do ?

 

Kind Regards Automat!c

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This is a bit of a "it depends" question. If you can get hold of a copy of the yellow book (aka Technical standards for places of entertainment), it contains all the relevant details for calculating numbers / widths of fire exits vs audience capacity.

 

It's impossible to say from the information you given as it also depends on the widths of those fire exits, their exact locations in relation to the seating, what lies beyond them etc.

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You're right to be concerned, however this is one of those times you cannot afford to take advice on your specific situation from an internet forum.

 

There will be someone in your college who has the responsibility for fire safety, it's their call to make on what capacity you can have with 2 fire exits out of action, as it will no doubt have knock on effect with your insurance. Bear in mind capacity will also include cast, crew and musicians.

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As Ninjadingle states, it's down to the venue managment. If you are not comfortable, politely make your concerns known and if you are still unhappy, walk away from the production - It's hard, you will disappoint people, but you will have a clear concience afterwards. I've done it, regretted it at the time, but been much happier afterwards. The hall will have been designed and built with a number of escape routes appropriate for the floor space and resonably expected use. Reducing or restricting the number of available escape routes is potentially dangerous. If you consider what is to be attempted to be dangerous, a word with the local council building standards/control or environmental heath department may be appropriate.

 

As a clued-up audience member, I'd expect to see visible 'Running Green Man' signage to each escape route. Each escape route signed in this manner *MUST* be unobstructed, visible and useable. If there are curtains across the doorway, you are heading into dodgy territory. The curtain must never obscure the 'Running Green Man' sign. From what I can remember long ago, as a general rule, you must be able to safely evacuate the hall within two minutes of the fire alarm sounding whilst one of the exits is unusable.

 

I don't like large seated events in school halls because the seats are inevitably loose. If you do have to evacuate, then there is a great risk of a tangled heap of seats and hurt people in the disorderly rush to get out. Get the seats cable-tied together in rows which will tend to force a more orderly evacuation.

Peter

 

 

 

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The precise specification and requirement for fire exits aren’t just the raw numbers but also the distance of travel to them, their visibility, the fire rating of the materials lining the exit route and all manner of other things so without someone with specific knowledge of the rules and experience in your actual venue getting involved you can’t just ask strangers on the internet.

As a general rule though (and speaking as someone who has to sign off on temporary venues and fire evac procedures every month) I can’t think of a single situation where it’s acceptable for a fire exit to be blocked (unless you go through all the paperwork to make it /not/ a fire exit) especially by something like an orchestra. Also the rule of thumb for fire exits is that one double- door exit is good for roughly 150people and that in the event of a fire you must assume that one of your fire exits is blocked by the fire: so if you have 270 audience plus 30 performers/crew/staff then your space should have 3 distinct double door sized fire exits available and unobstructed to allow safe exit from the theatre.

Again I can’t stress enough how venue specific the rules and regs are; the number of steps the audience has to walk down, the type of plasterboard on the walls, the average age of the audience all change the calculations significantly so getting specialist local advice is essential.

...and a minor but important point: this isn’t “health and safety” concerns, it’s straught up safety concerns so there’s no need to devalue the terminology by mis-using it though I do absolutely think you’re right to have spotted something that has concerned you and been sensible enough to investigate it further.

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Good advice from all, if there are fire doors at that point they are usually there for a reason and have been considered for licensing purposes so the general rule is never to block them. If you must remove an emergency facility then the local authority licensing officers have to approve this amendment but there is another aspect to this.

 

Since you appear to be in a college any changes may also affect your insurance cover. What happened to me might happen to your management and a safety issue in the theatre put the entire complex at risk of having their policies invalidated. That got minds concentrated very rapidly.

 

I don't quite understand the layout in that you appear to have two sets of doors side by side which is so unusual as to make me wonder why. Either an extra one was added to fulfil licensing requirements or a replacement set was installed and the original not removed from service. Either way you are right to raise concerns but we really cannot advise. Some fire officers could well treat two sets of doors side by side as the single "redundant" exit blocked by the fire leaving you with too little egress.

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I don't quite understand the layout in that you appear to have two sets of doors side by side which is so unusual as to make me wonder why.

Many schools & colleges built in the 60s/70s etc had halls with multiple doors on both sides. I know of two definite local schools that do - one where my daughters went to high school, and another secondary that I do an annual show for.

And come to think of it, my own old alma mater (before it was demolished last year) had the same arrangement as I recall.

 

 

 

 

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It's not clear whether you're employed by the School or not. I'm looking at it from my perspective as someone employed by the School and this being a School production.

 

Creatives can sometimes get carried away with their vision and I see it as my job to help realise the vision but with regard to practicality and safety.

 

In situations like this I imagine a prosecuting lawyer asking me why I decided it was wise to block off a fire exit regardless of how many other fire exits there were.

 

I can't really come up with anything approaching a sensible answer so I'd be doing what I could to persuade everyone (the creatives, Premises and Senior Management) that it was a bad idea. I'd be reminding them of the potential consequences and putting all my concerns on record. I'd be asking them to clarify whether they'd be covered by insurance if a fire door is blocked, especially if is marked as a Fire Exit with the green signs etc. I've found that asking who is taking responsibility for the decision focuses minds. In the end it is the Principal who is responsible and I've had to go to Senior Management over this kind of thing before now. Saying 'duty of care' appears to be a magic spell in these cases.

 

I suppose that if they decide to overrule me and go ahead then at least my back is covered. It's never come to that in the last 30 years.

 

There you go FWIW.

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1/ legally competent advice cannot come from an internet forum where you know no-one in detail.

2/ Fire exits are put there for a reason. "Art" is no reason to close or obscure a fire exit.

 

 

It's not clear whether you are a member of staff or a pupil at this establishment or even a hirer of the venue. While being aware that there are safety risks and their mitigation requirements, you need to be very clear who holds legal responsibility for these, this person will make the decisions and in the case of an incident has to accept liability and responsibility for those decisions possibly leading as far as criminal responsibility with prison sentence.

 

Health and Safety as of the HSE and HSWA is mostly to do with H&S of employees at their work, and to visitors to that work place. Places where people may assemble do not necessarily become work places, they may be places of entertainment or like a school multipurpose venues and will need fire risk assessment and hazard mitigation measures.

 

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The information in this post came free, it may or may not be worth what you paid for it. Having responsibilities and liabilities is something to take seriously.

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There are detailed regulations of course but I've always found the kernel is in the old Lord Chamberlain's regs which used to be printed in all theatre programmes (and set to music so memorably by Donald Swann as the final song in Hat). Follow the sprit of these and you will never block any exit and always make sure panic bolts are serviced and working and exit routes clear. Indeed if you know the tune it will be in your head when you do your inspections. When you are dealing with dense artistic types this doggerel is simple enough even for them.

 

 

1. The public may leave at the end of each performance by all the exit doors and all such doors must at that time be open

 

2. All gangways passages and staircases must be kept entirely free from chairs or any other obstruction

 

3. Persons shall not in any circumstances be permitted to stand or sit in any gangways intersecting the seating or to sit in any other gangways (hence the tip seats for ushers)

 

4. If standing is permitted in side and rear gangways it shall be strictly limited to the numbers exhibited on the adjacent notices

 

5. The Safety Curtain must be lowered and raised in the presence of each audience.

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I used to work in a 350-seat venue and often needed to look at the possibility of losing a fire exit for show-specific reasons. ImagineerTom's comments above are excellent and are pretty much exactly the way we used to work. We had 4 fire exits - 2 large doubles, 1 small double and 1 small single. We worked out that we needed the 2 large doubles plus one other at every event, but, assuming there were no other contributory factors, we'd be fine to lose one of the other exits. We got the Fire Officer in to confirm this and he agreed that we could do so (with a Risk Assessment) when we needed to do so but that the relevant Fire Exit signs should be removed or covered so we weren't blocking anything that appeared to be a fire exit.

 

Your situation seems to be similar in that you have 4 exits for 300 people + band and crew. You may be OK with only 3 of these and might be able to lose one of these. There is no way, though, that I can see you could lose more than 1 (because if a fire were to break out near one of the remaining exits this would leave you with only one exit for over 300 people.

 

Hope that helps.

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We all want to personally work in safe locations, but the danger is the decisions being made by unqualified people, who understandably nowadays err on the side of caution. The problem for me is I have a desire/need to make the show happen, and I think it impacts on my judgement - I hope less now I'm getting on a bit. My solution has ALWAYS been that when I'm not quite sure, one way or the other, is to ask the proper people. I've spoken to the fire service and the local town halls loads of times, and usually they are positive. My own venue were advised that they had insufficient fire exits for 1400 seats. This was perhaps ten years ago, and 200 seats were taken out of service. Two years ago, it occurred to us that we really didn't know WHO advised the restriction and it wasn't in the licence (nor we discovered was the safety curtain). We had a hire coming up ironically from the local Council, so we asked them to come and check. Our problem is that two of our double door exits are dual purpose. One we also use for the get ins and the other leads into a bar we use for disabled access too. We removed the fire exit signs from the door because it led into an area that is frequently full of people. This seemed common sense. No point keeping an exit clear if it is blocked on the other side by people? The visit we had concluded that the get in door, with a semi-permanent steepish ramp was fine and provided extra wheelchair emergency escape, and the bar could be cleared very quickly in an emergency because it has multiple exit routes, much greater than required.mthe upshot is our 200 capacity was restored, because the decision to reduce it was ill-informed. Same with fire questions. The fire service are keen to offer help and guidance. I have never had a negative contact with these people and they like being asked.
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