AnthonyB

Hatches are no longer routinely acceptable as escape routes in any case, they are very last century except in isolated plant rooms on roofs. Where does door 2 lead to? What automatic detection is there? Travel distance and occupancy wise single escape and single direction of travel is fine in the pictured area, so the issue must be with the area the outlet opens onto, but there's nothing that jumps out in the picture as requiring a by pass route.

Depends on the block, layout, fire resistance of the walls, fire strategy etc. Often service risers are indeed protected shafts with 60 minute walls and either 30 or 60 minute doors and don't need stopping at each floor (& sadly some RP's have spent substantial amounts on stopping after being erroneously advised it was required), sometimes the design is to continue a compartment floor so as to have service cupboards, you do see both approaches.

The interior of the flat is not a Fire Safety Order/Fire Safety Act/Fire Safety (England) Regulations matter - just the front door and walls. So no, not part of the checks. The interior is, if rented, a Housing Act/Housing Health & Safety Rating System issue and the recommendations in the LACORS guide apply for the standard of door. I dealt with a similar situation in a 60's block, answered as below. Flat internal doors do not form part of the common areas or the boundary with them and fall outside the scope of the Fire Safety Order (as amended) As built before 1971 the flats would be expected to have a hallway approach with Type 3 20 minute fire check doors to the kitchen & living room (where these are off the hall) but not the bedrooms or bathrooms. Post 1971 the bedrooms were added to require fire doors, a situation which is virtually unchanged to today bar the door standard has changed from FD20 to FD30 and self closers are not required. The doors within flats would only be the client’s responsibility if they are the landlord issuing tenancies to the flats and then under the Housing Act and not general fire safety legislation. The current approved guidance for general needs rented accommodation is the LACORS guide to “Fire Safety in certain types of Housing” used by local authority enforcement as part of the Housing Health & Safety Rating System. For flats over 4 stories it would expect fire doors to risk rooms and the original CP3 provision of fire check doors to kitchens and lounges would be in line with this. Whilst the expectation is for an FD30 doorset, the presence of a higher level of automatic fire detection (LD2 rather than the LD3 minimum in both LACORS and the Smoke & Carbon Monoxide (England) Regulations 2015 (as amended 2022) and thus covering the risk rooms) would be a reasonable mitigation. As a flat is renovated or a damaged door reported and requiring renewal it would be reasonable to expect new FD30 doors to be introduced.

Sadly that is the level of fire safety enforcement these days - it's very difficult to get them to enforce anything other than the most desperate situations - some are worse than others! Next stop is to try and get the press and resident fire safety pressure groups interested in the story.

If the door is on a hold open, then it's a self closing fire door held open until the fire alarm sounds, or if you release it manually from the hold open it's kept shut. If you want to keep it shut you can, but if you want it open it should only be done by the door retainer (e..g not a wedge or by disconnecting the self closer). Ideally a free swing closer should have been used which allows the door to be open at any angle but will always shut - but that would have cost them a lot more! Personally I'd never buy anything from the last 20 years as regardless of being signed off at the time a large quantity are full of fire safety defects and shortcuts - even the furore after Grenfell hasn't really stopped this.

Alarms for their own protection - no. Alarms part of a communal system - yes.

No, that would potentially be an offence. Remove the local one that only alerts you at your own risk (only you will die and statistically that's very likely where smoke alarms are rendered unworking) but you can't put other people at risk without consequence. Have you actually tried raising this with the managing agent? Depending on the layout of your flat there may be a possibility of adjusting the volume if it will still meet the required minimum, also the alarm shouldn't sound for more than a few seconds - if it is lasting longer they aren't testing it right (need either two staff or use the walk test mode on the panel).

Lot's of factors to consider - staffing, size, person centred FRA & PEEP results, numbers of residents, etc. Extra care is still largely indepwndant living with more help available if needed and bridges the gap between sheltered housing and residential care. Therefore, subject to the build & other factors, stay put as oppose to progressive horizontal evacuation is indeed an option - but not the default without assessment and should be case by case. You really only have the NFCC guide as before this there was nothing for non general needs housing except for sheltered and care homes for which the approach hasn't changed for quite some time.

Have you tried the fire safety enforcement department at your local fire & rescue service? (Failing that the local press) Several devices are faulty or programmed out (but physically in place) you have a mixture of everything out of action - detection, sounders, interfaces to other equipment (e.g. access control, smoke vents, etc) Some faults don't really impact the system that much, however there are so may on this system I'd question it's ability to function as intended as well as the competence of the Management Company, Agent and maintenance provider!

Assuming it's a residential system to BS9521 if correctly designed and installed the following should have been accounted for: 5.12 Frost protection Freezing can lead to burst pipes, inhibiting the movement of water through the sprinkler system and preventing discharge from the sprinklers. Normal methods of protection against freezing include: • installing pipework within the heated envelope of the dwelling; • the use of lagging and trace heating; • antifreeze. Unlike water in domestic water systems, water in sprinkler systems is not replenished by warmer water in normal circumstances. Therefore the water in a sprinkler system continues to lose heat until it reaches ambient air temperature and can therefore easily freeze, despite being lagged. Exposed pipework, unless adequately protected, can also be affected by wind-chill leading to the freezing of the contents, even when ambient temperatures are above 0 °C. Any water-filled pipework, pump(s) or container(s) used in the sprinkler system, which might be subjected to temperatures below 4 °C, should be protected against freezing. If antifreeze is used, it should meet the following recommendations. a) Antifreeze is flammable. It should therefore be sufficiently diluted and thoroughly mixed. Only approved premixed solutions that can be evidenced as suitable for sprinkler systems should be used. b) The use of antifreeze solutions in water systems connected to wholesome water supplies should have appropriate backflow protection. c) Only glycerine-based anti-freeze solutions may be used with plastic pipe and fittings. Glycol-based anti-freeze solutions should not be used in CPVC systems as it can damage the plastic. d) The use of antifreeze solutions in water systems connected to wholesome supplies requires a level of backflow protection which is greater than for systems without antifreeze. The water provider (e.g. water undertaker) should be consulted regarding the fluid categorization and the suitability of backflow prevention arrangements prior to installation.

I'd add to the mix what exactly are the door retainers linked to in order to release the door and whatever system it is does it have suitable smoke detection either side spaced as per BS7273-4? A fire door on a retainer is useless if it doesn't close promptly, even if linked to the sprinklers they wouldn't shut until considerable heat and smoke has passed them.

No problem as you aren't narrowing exit width.

The landowner of the roadway would have primary responsibility under the Occupiers Liability Act - whether the hall management could share culpability would be one for the lawyers, however the landowner would be the expected target of any litigation if there is any risk of users suffering injury on the premises by reason of any danger due to the state of the premises or to things done or omitted to be done on them.

Obviously for a definitive answer I'd need to inspect the site to look at the overall situation to give advice, it sounds like a decent pragmatic FRA is required. Detection & full evacuation can compensate to some degree, although it depends on how bad the situation is as to whether it would overcome the basement situation entirely. Even in workplaces with awake occupiers there has for many decades been a requirement to provide structural fire separation of basements. Some work may be indicated even with an evacuate strategy albeit potentially to a lesser level of protection (e.g. 30 minutes instead of 60) 100% compliance is determined by the FRA - this doesn't necessarily mean it has to follow current recommended standards, the legislation is deliberately framed to allow different solutions as long as it can be justified as to why it's still effective. PM me if you want to explore me assisting more formally.

That sounds correct for a block where it has been determined that a full evacuation strategy is necessary due to other defects in a legacy building. It's often easier and cheaper than bringing up everything else to a minimum acceptable specification

Going back to the 60's and 70's with the Guides to Fire Precautions in Premises requiring a Fire Certificate and in more recent times Approved Document B, the MHCLG fire risk assessment guides (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-safety-law-and-guidance-documents-for-business), BS9999 & BS9991, to name a few.

If the consumer unit itself is to the latest standard and thus a 'non combustible housing' there's an argument it's tolerable as it is.

Basic principles in doors that need to be fire doors and to what standard have existed for some considerable time, so it's straightforward for a fire risk assessor to idntify which doors need to be FD's and help the RP compile a register to check against.

Single chain Perko's with no adjustment have been deprecated in fire door ironmongery guidance for over 30 years as they cannot be adjusted to continue to close reliably & have a high failure rate so often doors aren't properly closed flush over latches, etc - however the government's guidance swerves this by only mentioning rising butt hinges as a definite no-no. You even see them fitted and accepted through the 90's as well. You can get twin arm adjustable concealed closers that do comply with the latest standards, as for the old type it's up to the responsible person - if still closing a door adequately and if that door is regularly checked so a failure is promptly noted, then some RP's would deem that acceptable. Most fire door inspection companies wouldn't!

Technically yes as more than two dwellings and the external fabric of the building has to be covered by an FRA even if no other areas in common, although it has been suggested simple house conversions into 2 flats are not required to meet this if no internal common areas in addition

Where is it in regard to escape routes, exits, etc?

Passing Building Regulations does not mean a premises complies with the Fire Safety Order, principally because the system doesn't really work and many buildings with completion certificates fail to comply because the completion process doesn't thoroughly check for any defects, shortcuts, use of incorrect materials or poor workmanship affecting efficacy, as many premises have found out post Grenfell (which was also certified as having passed Building Regulations at the time despite defective design and works) when subject to enforcement action due to latent defects. If the FRA highlights things that were a requirement of the Regs at the time of conversion but were overlooked there is a need to do something. If the issues weren't a requirement at the time of conversion but are now, as the fire safety legislation (unlike Building Regulations) has no statutory bar and has to account for technical progress and current standards, the FRA has to determine if meeting older standards is still safe or whether modernisation is required - for some matters the old approach can remain valid, for others it has been proven to be too inadequate and some improvement is needed. If it properly complied in 2017 there isn't a lot that should be wrong (however this relies on it being properly done which isn't a given these days) but note that many aspects of fire safety legislation (that have been around for a long time) aren't covered by Building Regulations, just the fire legislation so if compliant on the B.Regs front could still have been lacking since 2017 as they wouldn't have been checked by Building Control

It's not just a good idea but a legal requirement in virtually any premises that is not the interior of a dwelling

I'm guessing the metal door is between the garage and the outside? If so use what you want.

The requirement has nothing to do with Building Regulations (which are indeed not retrospective) but the Fire Safety Order which requires an assessment against current standards, knowledge and technology and has no statutory bar allowing retrospective application of guidance. The fire risk assessment is the means of determining if the difference between the old standards and todays is such that it presents and unacceptable risk. Some approaches used in 1975 would remain acceptable, others have been found to be sadly lacking, often associated with fatalities. A decision tree should be followed by the assessor: