Phoenix Journal · Fire Safety
Wedges, worn closers, painted-over seals and oversized gaps: the fire door faults that recur on inspection are mundane, and any one of them can let smoke through the barrier meant to stop it.
The fire door failures that inspectors record in hotels, restaurants and pubs are rarely dramatic. They are wedges under doors that should self-close, closers that have lost their tension, intumescent strips painted over during a refit, and gaps that have crept beyond tolerance as the building settles. Each looks trivial on its own. Each can be enough to let smoke through the one barrier meant to hold it back.
A fire door is not a heavy door; it is a tested assembly. The leaf, frame, hinges, intumescent seals, smoke seals, closer and latch were certified together to hold fire and smoke for a rated period, commonly thirty or sixty minutes. Change or disable any one part and the tested performance can no longer be relied upon. In hospitality that matters more than in most settings: hotels combine a sleeping risk with guests who do not know the building, and a busy restaurant packs unfamiliar people into a space where the fire is most likely to start in the kitchen behind them. The doors buy the time everyone needs to get out, but only if they still work as tested.
What gets written up
Ask a fire risk assessor or a fire officer what they find, and the same short list comes back. Self-closing devices are the single most common problem: closers wear out, get disconnected, or are defeated with a wedge or a hook because staff find a self-closing door inconvenient during service or deliveries. Intumescent strips are missing, damaged, or clogged with layers of paint that stop them expanding. Gaps around the leaf are too wide. Cold smoke seals are torn or absent. Certification labels have been painted over or lost. And doors carry damage, from trolleys, kegs and daily traffic, that breaches the leaf.
Gaps are worth understanding because they fail so often. Under BS 8214, the British code of practice for fire door assemblies updated in 2026 to cover timber, metal and composite doors, the gap around the head and jamb should sit at roughly two to four millimetres, with about three millimetres treated as the practical target, so the intumescent seal can bridge and close it under heat. The threshold gap depends on the door's own fire test evidence. Measure at several points rather than one, because a door that has dropped on its hinges will read fine at the top and far too wide at the bottom. When gaps drift beyond tolerance, smoke simply goes around the door.
The wedge is the defining hospitality failure. A propped fire door is convenient when you are carrying plates through a service corridor or wheeling in a delivery, and it feels harmless because nothing is on fire. But a door held open is not a fire door at all; it is a hole in a wall that was built to stop fire. The honest fix is rarely a new door. It is usually adjusting or replacing the closer, clearing paint off the seals, bringing the gaps back into tolerance, and giving staff a reason to stop wedging, whether that is a compliant hold-open device linked to the alarm or simply a better door discipline.
Where the law actually sits
Fire doors in a hotel or restaurant are governed by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, under which the responsible person must keep them maintained in efficient working order and good repair. The fixed quarterly and annual door checks people often quote come from the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, and those apply to multi occupied residential buildings over eleven metres, not to a standalone restaurant or hotel. For hospitality, the inspection frequency is set by the fire risk assessment: routine visual checks by trained staff catch wedges, damage and failed closers early, while a periodic detailed inspection, often by an FDIS certified inspector, examines gaps, seals, hardware and certification. Both should be recorded, because the record is the evidence. Fire doors are one part of a wider compartmentation scheme, which is why it helps to understand the link between ventilation and fire compartmentation before assuming the doors alone will hold a fire.
Doors are one breach; ducts are another
A fire door protects an opening in a fire resisting wall. It is not the only opening. In a catering building the kitchen extract duct passes straight through the same walls and floors the doors are protecting, and a grease lined duct is a ready made fire path that bypasses every door in the building. Treating the doors as sound while the ductwork carries fire around them is a false economy; the compartmentation logic is identical for both. Keeping the doors working and the extract system clean and fire integral are two halves of the same job, which is why it pays to understand how fire spreads through building voids and ductwork and to plan for both together rather than inspecting the doors and forgetting the ducts above the ceiling.
Questions
There is no single legal interval for hospitality premises. The frequency comes from your fire risk assessment. In practice that usually means frequent visual checks by trained staff plus a periodic detailed inspection of gaps, seals, hardware and certification, all recorded.
A fire door held open by a wedge or hook cannot perform as tested, so it breaches the duty to keep doors in efficient working order. If you need doors open for service, use a compliant hold open device that releases and closes the door when the fire alarm sounds.
Worn or disconnected self closers, doors wedged open, missing or painted over intumescent and smoke seals, gaps that exceed tolerance, damaged leaves, and missing or painted over certification labels. Most are maintenance issues rather than reasons to replace the door.
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