The new chairman of the UK’s largest fire door certification scheme has sounded a ‘stark warning’ about fire safety in UK buildings.
David Oldfield, head of joinery at Arnold Laver, has been voted as chairman of the BWF-Certifire Scheme, replacing David Paxton, technical director at Premdor.
David Oldfield said that safety had seen major breakthroughs in the last few years thanks to the overall improvement and simplification of third-party certification of fire doors and the work of the Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS). However, he was very worried still about a culture of complacency among those responsible for specifying, installing and maintaining passive fire protection measures such as fire doors.
In particular, he pointed to recent research by FDIS which discovered that 61% of fire doors inspected had problems with fire or smoke seals, and fines for breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order which included fire door failures had reached almost £1million this year. The ‘75 facts about fire’ produced by the BWF-Certifire Scheme for this year’s Fire Door Safety Week also showed a dossier of safety failures across the country.
David Oldfield said: “The scale of the problem is huge and appears to affect every sector and every type of building we use, work and live in. The state of the nation’s fire doors is a borderline national crisis.
“The fire door industry and its close partners across construction and fire safety services need to continue to work together to ensure critical messages about fire door safety reach our customers, but also echo in the corridors of power – change needs to be driven from the top.
“The message is simple: ensure the right product is specified and installed correctly, and that means a third-party certificated product. Anything less is frankly an unnecessary and unacceptable risk.”
