Regular fire door checks to become law in all blocks of flats

As fire door maintenance experts, we welcome the upcoming Fire Safety Bill. This is set to stipulate fire doors in all blocks of flats will need to be checked every 3 months.

This proposed new law comes from phase one of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, where it has been recommended that building owners or managers of every residential building containing separate dwellings should “be required by law to carry out checks at not less than three-monthly intervals to ensure that all fire doors are fitted with effective self-closing devices in working order”.

The government were initially adopting a ‘should be routinely checked’ approach, despite contrary recommendations from the Chair of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. However, Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, has stated the new Fire Safety Bill will include all of the recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry, and will be implemented “very swiftly”.

This will see a major shift in the thinking around fire door maintenance; despite being such valuable parts of a building’s fire compartmentalisation plans, there is currently no specific legislation requiring fire doors to be checked!

While we welcome the introduction of this legislation to improve overall fire door maintenance, we have to echo the thoughts of Kevin Underwood, Technical Director of the British Woodworking Federation:

“Quarterly checks might be suitable for domestic fire doors, but are not adequate for high-risk, high-usage doors. For instance, doors in corridors in busy areas may be more or less constantly in use, meaning that the risk of damage is high.

There are also fire doors where their contribution to a building’s fire safety is very important, which means they should be inspected even more frequently.

Fire door inspection has to be a risk-based approach.”

If you are a building owner, manager or Responsible Person, why not ask us about our Planned Preventative Maintenance Scheme?

Using our BM Trada Q-Mark Third Party Accreditation for fire door maintenance and installation, we can provide a regular, cost effective and professional maintenance programme to keep your fire doors at optimum performance. More information can be found here, or why not give us a call?

Regular fire door maintenance to become law

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