A fire door held open by a wedge, a hook, a chair or an extinguisher is not a fire door. This is the most common fire safety defect in occupied buildings and it is one of the few where the enforcement position is completely settled, because the door has been rendered incapable of doing the single thing it was installed to do.
The legal position
The fire safety order requires that fire safety measures provided in the premises are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in efficient working order and in good repair. A door propped open is not in efficient working order at the moment it matters. Enforcement action over wedged fire doors is routine, and it is a defect an inspector can see from the corridor without opening anything.
Why people do it
Because the door is in the way. Trolleys, deliveries, ventilation, heat, sightlines in a care setting, and doors that are too heavy for the people using them. Every one of these is a real operational problem, and telling people not to wedge doors without addressing the cause produces a building that complies while anybody is watching.
The lawful alternatives
Electromagnetic hold open devices wired to the fire alarm, which release the door on activation and on power failure. Free swing closers, which let the door swing freely until the alarm sounds and then revert to normal closing. Acoustic hold open devices that listen for the alarm and release, which suit buildings where wiring is impractical. All of these are engineered products with their own standards and all of them need to be included in the maintenance regime and tested with the alarm.
What the routine check should record
Not just whether the door closes, but whether it was found held open, and by what. A pattern of the same doors being wedged is management information: it says where a hold open device is needed, and it is far more useful than a repeated instruction to staff.
Questions people ask about fire door stops regulations
Is a doorstop ever acceptable on a fire door?
A floor mounted stop that limits how far the door opens is not the same thing as a device that holds it open, and is generally unobjectionable. Anything that keeps the door from closing is not.
Do hold open devices have to be tested?
Yes. They are fire safety measures and have to release on alarm activation, which is checked as part of the alarm test regime and recorded.
What about doors held open on a magnet during an evacuation drill?
A drill that activates the alarm should release them, and confirming that it did is one of the useful outputs of a drill.