# Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act 1963, Section 5: Overcrowding.

Extent: E+W+S

(1) No room comprised in, or constituting, premises to which this Act applies shall, while work is going on therein, be so overcrowded as to cause risk of injury to the health of persons working therein; and in determining, for the purposes of this subsection, whether any such room is so overcrowded as aforesaid, regard shall be had (amongst other things) not only to the number of persons who may be expected to be working in the room at any time but also to the space in the room occupied by furniture, furnishings, fittings, machinery, plant, equipment, appliances and other things (whether similar to any of those aforesaid or not).
(2) The number of persons habitually employed at a time to work in such a room as aforesaid shall not be such that the quotient derived by dividing by that number the number which expresses in square metres the area of the surface of the floor of the room is less than 3.7 or the quotient derived by dividing by the first-mentioned number the number which expresses in cubic metres the capacity of the room is less than 11.
(3) Subsection (2) of this section—
(a) shall not prejudice the general obligation imposed by subsection (1) thereof;
(b) shall not apply to a room to which members of the public are invited to resort; and
(c) shall not, in the case of a room comprised in, or constituting, premises of any class (being a room which at the passing of this Act is comprised in, or constitutes, premises to which this Act applies), have effect until the expiration of the period of three years beginning with the day on which the said subsection (1) comes into force as respects premises of that class.

---
Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/41/section/5 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/offices-shops-and-railway-premises-act-1963/section-5
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.

