In article ,
"Phil L" writes:
wrote:
I'm thinking of replacing a pull-down loft ladder with a proper
staircase and door. The loft would still only be used for storage, but
someone thought the presence of a staircase invoked a pile of Building
Regs requirements.
Can anyone clarify whether there are any rules around this?

If it's a habitable room, then there's a raft of regulations to comply with,
fire doors, alarms etc.
If it's for storage, then i don't think any of these apply

That's defined by rules of your local BCO. An example set of rules
I saw is having more than 2 of things like staircase, heating, power,
lighting, flooring, walls, etc makes it count as habitable.

The other thing that applies in any case is minimum headroom over
any new stair case (something like 2m, but I don't recall the exact
value).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]