A landlord has been advised by their chartered surveyors to instal Internal fire doors into 1 bed high rise flats, as the travel distance to front door is 10.4m.

Personally, I believe it not reasonably practicable to bring the block up to current benchmark standards, and a needless expense to leaseholders. Account should be taken of the addition of smoke detection and good standard of compartmentation. But that’s just me. Views please  

My question about the doors. 

Are newly fitted internal fire doors to be included in the ‘best endeavour’ annual checks like all flat front doors, under the new regs (Fire door regulation 10). Is it not necessary, or has this been overlooked? 

 

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.