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Advice on Overcrowding and Fire Safety

1 November 2018

Overcrowding on the Bloomsbury campus

We are becoming increasingly concerned about overcrowding on the Bloomsbury campus particularly by reports of over crowding in Lecture theatres and teaching rooms. In centrally bookable rooms the maximum occupancy number of the room is the safe number for room occupancy. This is in large part determined by the egress capacity of the room as well as neighbouring rooms in the building, ie. if many of the rooms in a building are overcrowded it may become impossible to evacuate the room and the building safely in the event of a fire.

We have sought to address these concerns through the UCL Health and Safety Committee with limited success (note 1).

Now we need to make members aware that section 2.12 of UCL's Fire Safety Standard states that: "All UCL teaching staff have a 'Duty of Care' to ensure that students whilst studying or carrying out associated activities, to ensure that they are safe from fire" and that breaching this safe occupancy level could leave members culpable in the event of deaths during a fire.

We recommend that all staff engaged with teaching refuse to teach in rooms that are filled over the maximum room capacity as you will be breaching your duty of care to the students under UCL's Fire safety standard. However, you must give the programme / module lead the opportunity to resolve overcrowding issue before doing this. To this end:

  1. Check that the numbers of students registered to attend a lecture / class do not exceed the room capacity.
  2. If numbers do exceed the room capacity write to the programme / module lead requesting a larger room.
  3. If a suitable solution cannot be found write again to the programme / module lead stating that on advice of your union you are not be prepared to teach in rooms that are filled beyond their safe occupancy levels.
  4. If you are a programme or module lead in this situation you should raise the issue with your departmental / faculty tutor and Head of Department.

We will continue to raise this at the UCL Health and Safety Committee - our current objective is to ensure that the safe room occupancy is clearly indicated outside each teaching room and that UCL develops a joined up policy for avoiding overcrowding.

(1) January 2018 minutes of UCL Health and Safety Committee