Fire Safety

Fire Safety

Compliance with fire safety regulations is a priority to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all residents in a property.

Fire doors are an essential part of a building’s fire strategy. Ensuring the integrity of fire doors is critical to the fire safety to the building as this prevents the spread of fire and deadly smoke. Doors typically provide 30-minute, or 60-minute fire protection and the repairing responsibility of flat doors are usually set out in your lease.

Fire doors should be regularly inspected and maintained. Buildings over 5 storeys or 11m & 7 storeys or 18m in height are subject to more stringent regulation with each and every internal communal fire door having to be inspected at quarterly intervals and flat entrance doors requiring an annual survey.

(See below example picture of a non-compliant fire door (left), adjacent to a compliant fire door (right)).

Communal hallways and corridors should be completely free of personal items; the storage of cycles, pushchairs, shoes or other articles not only poses a fire risk but could also hinder the ability of residents to exit the building in the event of a fire and also restrict access to the fire brigade.

 

Significant progress has been made across our portfolio in bringing our Clients, and their buildings, into compliance with these fire safety measures.   However.  our property management team have also experienced some resistance over the required actions to meet the standards of compliance.

Whilst most fire safety requirements are the responsibility of the Landlord or Management Company (and therefore works can be funded by the service charges), many leases place the responsibility of flat front doors, for example, with the individual property owner. Therefore, in this instance, each owner is required to facilitate their own remedial works, and this is where co-operation is key.  Failure to act can endanger the lives of everyone in the building.

We are seeing Insurers reviewing fire risk assessments as part of their renewal processes. As fire is a peril they are being asked to cover, failing to comply with recommendations will inevitably result in increased premiums and excesses. Serious issues can even result in the Insurers removing cover or refusing renewal requests.  This can make placing insurance extremely difficult, and costly.

As part of the conveyancing process for any flat, Burns Hamilton will likely be asked by the appointed solicitors to provide pre-sale enquiry responses. One of the requirements is to provide a copy of the fire risk assessment, as well as confirmation of whether the actions raised have been addressed.  Any issues or compliance failures will have to be disclosed, and this can impact both value and saleability of the properties in the development.

We appreciate that there are additional costs in relation to this concentration on fire safety, however, this is for the benefit and safety of every person in the building.  We would like to take the opportunity to thank all our residents for their continued support and diligence as we work with you on meeting the standards.

 

At Burns Hamilton we are committed to maintaining the highest standards and we invest in training for our teams to help navigate the evolving fire safety requirements.  If you have any concerns around the fire safety of your building, please do raise these, in writing, with your Property Manager, who will be able to investigate and respond to you.