A decade since the introduction of major new fire safety legislation, fire door safety campaigners are warning that those in charge of fire safety in buildings are still not taking their responsibilities seriously enough.
The warning comes in the run up to Fire Door Safety Week (running from 14-20 September 2015), a national campaign which aims to raise awareness of the critical importance of fire doors in saving lives and protecting property.
Hannah Mansell, spokesperson for Fire Door Safety Week, said: “We need to up the ante on fire door safety. The rates of fire deaths and casualties are reducing, but there are still an average of 25 fatalities or injuries from building fires every day.
“Fire doors are a crucial first line of defence in many of these fires, and yet they remain a significant area of neglect. Fire doors are often the first thing to be downgraded in a specification, mismanaged throughout their service life, propped open, damaged and badly maintained.
“10 years on from the new law being introduced, fire door failure is still a consistent feature of prosecutions under the Fire Safety Order. Just this year alone we know of hundreds of thousands of pounds of fines and prison sentences for people who have failed to meet their fire safety responsibilities. We’re finding dodgy fire doors in buildings of every type – from council flats to care homes, hospitals to hotels, private rented homes to publicly listed company HQs.
“We want to see organisations and building owners in every sector pledge support to Fire Door Safety Week and take action today to check their fire doors.”
Fire Door Safety Week is an annual campaign instigated by the British Woodworking Federation (BWF), the BWF-CERTIFIRE Fire Door Scheme and the Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS), and is supported by the government’s Fire Kills campaign.
The initiative receives a ‘significant body of support’ from a large number of companies in the door and hardware industries which are promoting Fire Door Safety Week to their customers. Those holding events during the week, include Midland Building Products, Arnold Laver, Hoppe, Lorient Polyproducts, Pyroguard, Dorma UK, Intastop, Ironmongery Direct and Geze UK.
A seminar on fire door safety will also be held on 17 September at the Building Centre in London, including the launch of the first comprehensive guide to fire doors.
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, employers, or those who have control over a premises (known as the ‘responsible person’) are required to carry out a fire risk assessment and act on its findings. The risk assessment should also identify actions which need to be taken in order to protect the building from fire. It must be kept under constant review and amended if any changes are made to the premises.
However, since the Fire Safety Order was introduced in 2005, there continues to be a steady stream of prosecutions against building owners, landlords and agents and Hannah Mansell believes this is because awareness of the Fire Safety Order is still far too low: “When managers with formal responsibility for fire safety in their organisations were asked last year if they were fully aware of their legal obligations, almost half (46.5%) said they either did not know what they were, or admitted they were unclear.
“A similar proportion (45%) say they really would not know how to spot a dodgy fire door – one of the most critical passive fire protection features in the buildings we use every day. This is why we run Fire Door Safety Week, to drive up awareness of the correct specification, installation and maintenance of fire doors.”
Follow @FDSafetyWeek on Twitter for campaign news and updates, or look out for tweets using the hashtag #FireDoorSafetyWeek.
