Exterior front door replacement on 1st floor flat

[Leofric]

The staircase is communal but the landing from the stairs to the front door is not shared .The problem with a safe means of escape in case of fire looks like the windows you have to pass on the first floor to reach the stairs and on the ground floor as you leave the stairs. This would not be acceptable under current building regulations

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Lots of councils and housing associations have been running round recently checking all their wonderful composite doors from various manufacturers, as they may not actually be correctly certified fire doors.

It doesn't really suprise me. NHS trusts have reacted differently with quite a few opting to do a physical burn test to prove whether their doors and frames (they need to be considered as a set) meet the current regulations. I have yet to hear of a council brave enough to try that. One of the things that does concern me is just how few joiners (and for that matter foremen and even site managers) still don't understand the basics of fire door installation and the need to get the gappings right and not cut corners (floorers please note that you work is often not up to scratch, either)

 

[smmjh11]

Thank you all for taking the time to respond.

 

[JohnD]

H'mmm, i wonder how you identify this person:

(4) Where a person has, by virtue of any contract or tenancy, an obligation of any extent in relation to—

(a)the maintenance or repair of any premises, including anything in or on premises; or

(b)the safety of any premises,

that person is to be treated, for the purposes of paragraph (3), as being a person who has control of the premises to the extent that his obligation so extends.

So I wonder how you'd go about getting to see this Fire Safety Risk Assessment, if indeed there is one and you were just a humble resident in the block. I can't see a reference to who keeps the Assessment and how a person gains access to it.

 

[^woody^]

So I wonder how you'd go about getting to see this Fire Safety Risk Assessment

Ask the landlord, normally.

The landlord also provides the current RA as part of any lease purchase or transfer, as it's a standard request from the Conveyancer.

It's also the first thing the Fire Service request following an incident.

 

[JohnD]

And by landlord you mean leaseholder or managing agent of the individual flat? or do you mean the freeholder or managing agent of the block?

If there is no FRA, would anyone know or care prior to the first fire?

 

[^woody^]

the block

It's whoever owns or manages the block. This legislation is primarily concerned with the communal areas - working in the common areas (in the context of it being a workplace) or work to the communal parts (in context of the safety of residents and visitors).

This function used to be done by the fire service but was passed to the owner. The fire service does still carry out random checks, and lack of a FSRA can be quite serious for the owners of the block. All the recent court cases for fires in shared blocks have been on the basis of no adequate FSRA or failure to implement the recommendations within it.

 

[JohnD]

I can see it would be useful for residents associations and individual residents to keep an eye on this report. I can't see reference to a legal right for them to access it though. If there was, bad cases would doubtless get publicised.

As you say, "All the recent court cases for fires in shared blocks have been on the basis of no adequate FSRA or failure to implement the recommendations within it" so no doubt there are plenty more that haven't been uncovered.

Many people have put the Grenfell scandal to the back of their minds now.

 

[wessex101]

I can see it would be useful for residents associations and individual residents to keep an eye on this report. I can't see reference to a legal right for them to access it though. If there was, bad cases would doubtless get publicised.

As you say, "All the recent court cases for fires in shared blocks have been on the basis of no adequate FSRA or failure to implement the recommendations within it" so no doubt there are plenty more that haven't been uncovered.

Many people have put the Grenfell scandal to the back of their minds now.

I thought Grenfell had a current FSRA produced by the management organisation and the external cladding had all been signed off by the local authority building control as it complied with the latest relevant Euro code. As have hundreds of similar high rise buildings and hospitals and schools and office blocks.

It is a sad fact that fire safety risk assessments do not work, but then neither did the old fire certificates issued by the local fire brigade.

 

[wessex101]

It doesn't really suprise me. NHS trusts have reacted differently with quite a few opting to do a physical burn test to prove whether their doors and frames (they need to be considered as a set) meet the current regulations. I have yet to hear of a council brave enough to try that. One of the things that does concern me is just how few joiners (and for that matter foremen and even site managers) still don't understand the basics of fire door installation and the need to get the gappings right and not cut corners (floorers please note that you work is often not up to scratch, either)

I worked on a new flats development last year with the tallest at 11 storeys. The passive fire precautions were a joke. Gaps in fire stopping in the service ducts and risers, fire doors that did not close properly or if they did close had huge gaps around the stiles and head. The tradesmen didn't understand the regulations and as English wasn't their first language couldn't have read the installation instructions if they wanted too. Just how they manged to fit doorsets that come ready assembled so badly was quite an achievement. The developer did not want to know and probably filed my report in the circular filing cabinet.

Don't get me started on NHS sites. I predict that will be the next big scandal after Grenfell. Most hospitals have a "stay put" policy for obvious reasons, evacuating over a thousand people who are seriously ill and bed ridden is quite tricky. So they rely on compartmentation of minimum 1 hour and often 2 hours to allow the fire and smoke to be contained and extinguished before they have to consider large evacuations. The trouble is the compartmentation is often compromised and the fire doors either have not been installed correctly or have been damaged by beds, trollies, bins etc. being smashed in to them day after day.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

..... fire doors that did not close properly or if they did close had huge gaps around the stiles and head.....
The developer did not want to know and probably filed my report in the circular filing cabinet.

My experience as well, I'm afraid.

The trouble is the compartmentation is often compromised and the fire doors either have not been installed correctly or have been damaged by beds, trollies, bins etc. being smashed in to them day after day.

I was involved a couple of years back on a 10-year update on one NHS Trust where we took every fire door (well over 1000 of them) up to the current standard. That meant that the architraves had to come off as well and the number of FR60 casings we found where there was either no or inadequate fire stopping or where the original installers had used non-AFFF foam (which had to be labouriously dug out and replaced by more suitable materials) must have approached 50%. That doesn't say a lot for the original build team. We didn't need to replace many doors (they are actually pretty robust), but there were a large number where the floors were so uneven that it was beyond the capabilities of floor seals to provide an adequate smoke/fire seal - so the floorers had to come back in an relevel the floors. In the course of that job several of us did fire door inspection training. Doing that made me realise just how poor many builds are in the UK. I feel it's not the spec or the regs which are at fault in many cases, though, it's the low quality of installation and almost complete lack of competent oversight by the joinery contractors coupled with the "Nelsonian eye" view of the main contractors which is to blame. You can employ foreigners, but you need to supervise things with far greater rigour and competence than is currently being done. And as you say, make waves and you'll either be ignored, or get sacked