Picture the entrance to a busy Hull clinic on a Monday morning: a wheelchair user, a parent with a pushchair and a porter pushing a trolley all arriving at the same set of doors within a minute of each other. Getting that right isn’t just good manners, it’s now a legal duty, and the rules around how automatic doors are specified and maintained have moved on from where they were even a couple of years ago.
People still talk about ‘DDA doors’, but that legislation was replaced by the Equality Act 2010, which puts the duty on the operator to make reasonable adjustments so disabled visitors aren’t put at a substantial disadvantage. BS 8300 and Approved Document M set the design guidance for getting there, and BS EN 16005 covers the powered-door safety side, sensor coverage, force limits and fail states if something goes wrong.
The numbers matter more than people think. An accessible route needs at least 850mm of effective clear opening, activation controls want to sit 900 to 1100mm above the floor with 300 to 500mm of lateral clearance, and thresholds should be kept to 5mm internally and no more than 15mm externally with a chamfered edge. Sensors need to cover the approach, the side screens and the sweep zone, not just the threshold.
And doors don’t stay compliant just because they were compliant on install day. We service busy commercial sites in Hull, Beverley and across Humberside every six months as standard, checking sensors, fail-safe behaviour on power loss, and that the doors still unlock properly on the fire alarm. Domestic installations want at least an annual check. Skip it and you’re relying on a door that hasn’t been tested since it went in.
Gem Automatic Doors installs, repairs and services automatic entrance doors, roller shutters and fire shutters across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Humberside, with a 24-hour emergency call-out and a four-hour response time in working hours. If your doors are due a service or you’re not sure they’d pass a BS EN 16005 check, get in touch at gemautomaticdoors.com/.