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Our house is a 1930s semi. A few decades after it was built, a timber porch was added (with clay tile roof). Although that timber porch had a lockable front door, the more secure original front door of the house remained, so one had to open the porch door and then the front door to get in. As part of our renovation/extension project we are knocking down the old timber porch, building a cavity wall porch, and doing away with having two lockable doors. Instead we will just have one door within what will form the new external wall of the house/new porch. There will be no lockable door where the original front door of the house was. The new front door has multi-point locks, all glazing is laminated and it is PAS24 certified, so it definitely applies with Approved Document Q (even though it doesn't need to, as this is not a new build or a dwelling formed by a change of use). My question is, as a matter of fire safety under Approved Document B, do the building regs require me to ensure it can be opened from the inside without a key. My BCO seems to think that it does, but when I challenged him on the wording of Approved Document B (which I've pasted below) he was lost for words and said he "had to go and check". Not sure what he had to go and check. Is there further guidance on how to interpret the approved documents which are not contained within the approved documents themselves? The relevant wording, so far as I can see, is the following: I therefore cannot see that there is any requirement to have a thumbturn on an external door. In particular, 2.10(c) makes clear that the lock on an escape window may be fitted "with or without removable keys". There is therefore no logical reason as to why the same wouldn't be true of an external door. Now it's possible he will refer to provision 2.10(b) and say that if the front door is locked and one doesn't have a key one cannot get out. But it would be bizarre to interpret it that way in the absence of a clear provision that creates a positive requirement to have a thumbturn. Another query I have is whether any of this applies at all. What if I was doing a renovation that was generally caught by building regs but chose not to replace my perfectly good front door. Would i then suddenly have to upgrade my lock to one that had a thumbturn just to comply with building regs?