What is a protected route?
A protected route is a part of an escape route enclosed in fire-resisting construction, so that people inside it are shielded from a fire elsewhere in the building while they leave.
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<img src="https://fireoptix.co.uk/glossary/protected-route/diagram.svg" alt="protected route — diagram from FireOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://fireoptix.co.uk/glossary/protected-route">What is a protected route?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://fireoptix.co.uk">FireOptix</a>
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</figure>Reaching one is the point of travel distance. Once inside a protected route, someone is no longer escaping through the building — they are in a construction designed to keep the building out for long enough to walk its length.
The protection is only as good as its openings. Every door into a protected corridor is a fire door, and a single one wedged open undoes the enclosure for everyone using it.
Protected routes are also the first thing a building colonises. They are conveniently located and apparently empty, which is why storage appears in them faster than anywhere else.
In practice
A corridor with a new glazed meeting room opening onto it.
The glazing is handsome and is not fire-resisting, and the room now opens directly into the route.
A protected route depends on the construction around it, and an aesthetic decision about an internal wall is a fire strategy decision whether or not anybody treated it as one.
Architects and fit-out contractors are frequently not shown the fire strategy.
What goes wrong in practice
- Storage in a protected corridor, added item by item so no single one looks like the problem.
- Doors into the route wedged, propped or removed.
- Services installed through the enclosure with no reinstatement of the fire resistance.