Once a building has been approved for habitation the owner is obliged to comply with the Regulatory Reform Order (Fire Safety) 2005. Under the RRO 2005 any person employing more than five persons or a building that has any common area that can be accessed by the general public or people employed around those premises is obliged to provide evidence to justify the Fire Risk Assessment and its conclusions. The main points to consider are, what types of fire could occur? Would people be able to escape readily? How can the fire service deal with a fire in a particular location simply and effectively?

Atria Smoke Control Systems
An atrium can pose a design challenge to the designer. The fact that it lacks vertical compartmentation against smoke travel means that it is easy for smoke to spread laterally into higher levels and to other parts of the building, unless there are suitable measures to control the smoke.
A well designed smoke control system should be able to maintain smoke free escape conditions on all occupied levels to allow evacuation with the minimum risk of smoke inhalation, injury or death.

The design approaches
There are a number of design approaches available. A single approach or a number of different approaches may be used in a building, depending upon the location of the fire. The most common approaches are summarised below.
Compartmentation: Smoke control is provided by making each space a separate, fully fire resisting compartment so that smoke does not escape into other areas. This option does not require smoke ventilation but requires expensive and restrictive construction.
Compartment extract: If smoke ventilation is to be provided, maximum protection is achieved if smoke is not allowed to escape from the fire room but is directly extracted to outside. However this requires either multiple individual systems or complex ducted systems so is rarely used unless essential.