Designed to strengthen engagement with those who live in high-rise residential buildings, ‘Principal Accountable Persons’ and professionals operating across the UK’s construction and built environment sectors, the Building Safety Regulator’s bulletins will be packed with valuable information and the latest updates.

Subscribers can expect important safety alerts, new and updated guidance, industry competency resources, practical toolkits and resources, training opportunities and ways in which to share feedback and help shape the ongoing work of the Building Safety Regulator.

Focusing on residents

As a subscriber, individual residents will receive alerts on resources alongside information about when and who to contact regarding building safety-related issues. Individuals can subscribe to the ‘Your Home, Your Safety’ bulletin if they’re a resident of a high-rise building in England.

They will then receive regular updates about how the Building Safety Regulator is working on their behalf to keep families safe in their homes. Residents can sign up online.

‘Principal Accountable Persons’ bulletin

If you’re a ‘Principal Accountable Person’ or an ‘Accountable Person’ with responsibilities for managing safety risks in a high-rise building, you can subscribe to the ‘Principal Accountable Person’-centred bulletin, which will be issued every two months.

Those who choose to sign up will receive critical regulatory updates, building safety alerts, competency resources and practical support from the managing building safety toolkit to help in meeting legal duties. Sign up online.

Industry bulletin

If you’re neither a resident nor a ‘Principal Accountable Person’, but work (or have an interest in) the built environment and building safety arena, you can subscribe to the Building Safety Regulator’s monthly industry bulletin.

This particular bulletin offers the latest news, regulatory alerts, industry guidance from the Building Safety Regulator and competency resources. It also contains vital information about how the Building Safety Regulator actually regulates higher-risk buildings and the overall work designed to raise safety standards for England’s buildings, while improving built environment competence across England and Wales. Sign up online.

Social media

Subsequent to the move to become a standalone organisation earlier this year, the Building Safety Regulator now has its own social media channels. The new channels allow the organisation to provide a direct and focused line of communication to everyone interested in building safety, competence and the Building Safety Regulator’s work.

The social channels share the latest building safety guidance, resources and news, competency updates and opportunities to join online webinars and events.

They complement the Building Safety Regulator’s GOV.UK page, campaign site and the aforementioned bulletins.

Follow the Building Safety Regulator on social media:

• LinkedIn 
• YouTube 
• Facebook 
• X (formerly Twitter) 
• Instagram
• Threads
• Linktree

Photograph: Ibis Hotel, Malaga (Pedro J Pacheco)

Back in May, the Ibis Hotel in central Malaga (pictured) was gutted by a fire that began in a ground floor restaurant and then ripped through all four storeys of the building. The blaze burned for four days having reignited three times. This was partly due to wooden flooring and combustible interior materials that kept feeding hidden ‘hotspots’ long after firefighters believed the blaze was out.

Upwards of 100 guests had to be evacuated from the premises in the middle of the night. The local Fire and Rescue Service used more than two million litres of water in 12 hours in a bid to dampen the flames. Enough water, in fact, to supply a town of 20,000 inhabitants for around 12 hours.

For their part, investigators continue to examine why the fire compartmentation arrangements between floors failed so completely. Fire safety consultants reviewing the incident have since voiced their considered opinion that a working fire suppression system could have contained the blaze to a single area.

What stands out from this particular episode is not the reaction of the tourists who had been sleeping in the building hours earlier. It was the reaction of local residents and business owners alike, alarmed by the reignitions and the smoke subsequently returning to their skyline, who began asking publicly whether the building had been properly inspected and whether or not the city was adequately prepared for a fire like this at all.

The president of the old town’s Residents Association has warned the local council that the historic centre carries a particularly high fire risk, citing timber-framed buildings, a dense cluster of nightlife venues and streets that are far too narrow to be able to accommodate fire engines.

Bar or hotel?

The Constellation Bar located in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana in Valais isn’t a hotel, but the New Year fire that killed 41 people and injured over 100 in the basement of the premises on New Year’s Day most certainly belongs in the same conversation.

The venue was full of exactly the kind of individuals who populate hotels across Europe every season. The bar had not been inspected since 2019, despite annual checks being a legal requirement. Of 128 bars and restaurants in the resort, only 40 were inspected the previous year.

It has since emerged that a fire exit in the basement was locked and that members of staff had known for years the ceiling foam was a potential hazard.

A further fire on 12 July in a Bangkok bar is reported to have killed 36 people and left a further 70 injured. Local outcry has led to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration ordering inspections to be carried out at similar establishments. Officials have inspected 865 establishments to date and closed down 79 venues.¹

Locals – rather than the young skiers and tourists filling the bars of Crans-Montana in the early hours of the New Year – are the ones demanding to know why inspection procedures lapsed and who was supposed to be checking.

Pattern worth noticing

In both cases, the legislation existed. What’s far less clear is whether it was ever enforced and who was watching to make sure that was indeed the case. Whether it’s a hotel or a bar, guests simply assume someone has already asked these questions on their behalf. In reality, they rarely have.

Earlier this year, we wrote about a South Korean scheme making sprinkler status visible to guests before they book, precisely because nobody else was going to ask for them. Malaga and Crans-Montana are further evidence that the people who should be raising these questions – ie the travellers actually staying in or visiting these buildings – are the last to do so.

It’s only post-incident, when residents and owners alike are left staring at a gutted building on their own street, that anyone asks whether fire safety features were regularly updated and tested or sprinkler systems fitted and checked.

If fire safety regimes and the use of fire sprinkler systems are only ever interrogated in hindsight, then neither is really being checked at all.

Tom Roche is Secretary at the Business Sprinkler Alliance (www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org)

Reference

¹https://news.theonlinecitizen.com/2026/07/28/bangkok-orders-79-entertainment-venues-to-halt-operations-after-week-long-inspection

Fire Aware’s CEO Gavin Skelly firmly believes those practitioners who adopt the highest standards of Best Practice should be proud of their stance as opposed to those who still seek to cut corners.

“There’s a growing demand from the public and decision-makers in the supply chains to meet and exceed fire safety requirements,” stated Kelly. “The Building Safety Act 2022 references competence and what it means in terms of knowledge, qualifications and skills. However, members of the public don’t know what competence looks like technically and neither should they be expected to, but they do have a right to expect reassurance that they’re safe when moving around in our towns and cities.”

Further, Skelly commented: “Best Practice every time should be the norm, but that’s not the case. We will continue to demand the highest standards technically and morally to ensure that people and the buildings they inhabit are safe.”

According to Skelly, the public has a right to know they’re protected by the actions and behaviours of those duty holders responsible for putting fire safety measures in place (including those who procure products and services, install them and assess them).

Culture change

“If we are to change the cultural landscape in the fire sector,” observed Skelly, “we must shift the market to provide the public and the supply chains with an identity of that responsible provider. When lives are at stake, providing the consumer with a choice to make about their service provider’s behaviour is every bit as important as identifying their technical ability.”

Fire Aware’s members commit to a Code of Conduct and specific Charters, which take the safety process beyond legislation. The members abide by them. “This is a vocation, not a job, and we should not forget that,” affirmed Skelly.

“That means following the Codes of Practice and legislation and even exceeding them to ensure the public can sleep at night with peace of mind. We still come across instances where safety has been breached by cutting corners to save money. We need commitment and transparency in the way that companies and responsible people do business when safety is at risk.”

Skelly has also emphasised that the fire safety principles are relevant to any sector which relies on Best Practice including the retail industry, hospitality, stadiums, healthcare and the public infrastructure.

Moral and ethical behaviours

Dame Judith Hackitt has called for cultural change through moral and ethical behaviours. That ‘Call to Action’ has been supported by the Building Safety Regulator that was created to promote competence and higher standards.

The Building Safety Regulator, of course, sits at the heart of the Government’s mission to create safe communities, support economic growth and deliver 1.5 million high-quality homes for residents. Its role is part of the drive to advance building safety and restore confidence in the safety of people’s homes.

*Further information is available online at www.fireaware.org

Recent updates to Approved Document B and Technical Booklet E mean that, where a building is registered as a Care Home, fire sprinkler systems are now mandatory for new builds. On paper, this looks like progress. In practice, it only tells part of the story.

Extra care housing, the model under which the Beechmere Retirement Village in Crewe operated before the devastating fire that destroyed it back in 2019, simply doesn’t fall into this bracket. Despite housing elderly and often less mobile residents, many of whom require regular care and assistance, extra care schemes are typically classified in regulatory terms as something in a grey zone.

The end result is that a building can be functionally indistinguishable from the characteristics of a Care Home in terms of who lives there and what assistance they may need in a fire scenario, yet sit entirely in a ‘blind spot’ within the regulatory guidance when it comes to the use of sprinkler protection.

This isn’t a new observation. The Business Sprinkler Alliance has raised this issue before, while the recent proposed amendments to Approved Document B of the Building Regulations have done nothing to close it.

For extra care facilities, the proposal is for enhanced fire detection and a definition change. Outside of this, the guidance remains the same regardless of the realities of who actually lives in these buildings and how quickly they could evacuate in an emergency episode.

Activity versus action

The frustrating element of all this is that Government is not unaware of the gap. There has been activity, consultations, statements and research, but activity is not the same as action.

From where the Business Sprinkler Alliance sits, it increasingly looks like the cards are being shuffled rather than the underlying problem being addressed. Definitions are tweaked and guidance documents are amended at the margins, but the core inconsistency – ie that two buildings housing equally vulnerable people can be treated entirely differently depending on a classification on paper – remains untouched.

Regulator-commissioned research into this area has also left much to be desired. The Business Sprinkler Alliance finds it somewhat odd that, despite making so many observations, the research produced inconclusive and contradictory findings on fire alarms. It’s fair to say this has not given the sector the clarity or direction it needs.

In relation to the question of fire sprinklers, this was pushed into the future of some unknown ‘Phase 2’ which, again, is odd as this would have been one of the key tasks for the research in the first place.

Where there was an opportunity to properly interrogate the risks faced by extra care residents and recommend a proportionate regulatory response, what has emerged instead feels like a missed opportunity, falling some way short of giving policymakers the evidence base required to act decisively.

Growing population

This matters. The population living in extra care housing is growing. As the UK’s demographic profile shifts and more people choose – or are otherwise guided towards – these models of independent-but-supported living, the number of people potentially affected by this regulatory ‘blind spot’ will only increase.

Waiting for another Beechmere Retirement Village-scale incident in order to force change is not an acceptable approach. Slamming the stable door is a poor substitute for rational regulation.

The Business Sprinkler Alliance’s position remains consistent: classification should not be the determining factor in whether a building receives life-saving fire protection. The characteristics of the individuals living there, their age, mobility and reliance on assistance should be central to the conversation.

The Business Sprinkler Alliance urges Government to look again, thoroughly and rationally, at where extra care facilities sit in the fire safety landscape. Collectively, we need to ensure that future guidance reflects the needs of residents rather than the convenience of categorisation.

Iain Cox is Chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance (www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org)

The two trade bodies have worked in parallel to provide practical advice covering both smaller batteries and larger traction batteries used to power warehouse equipment.

The guidance was launched at the UK Warehousing Association Member Connect event in Felixstowe, where Clare Bottle (CEO of the UK Warehousing Association) and David Goss (technical director at the UK Material Handling Association) discussed key highlights for warehouse operators.

Batteries are vital for decarbonising the economy, whether through mobility (ie e-bikes and e-scooters) or machinery (ie forklifts, which traditionally ran on gas). However, while rare, there’s a risk that unmonitored batteries can go into thermal runaway, in turn realising a fire.

The new guidance covers recommendations including storing batteries in cool, dry conditions, limiting long-term storage and separating battery types. There are also pointers on how to monitor stock, prepare emergency plans and train members of staff.

Positive impact

Clare Bottle explained: “Developments in battery technology are having a huge and positive impact, making our lives more convenient, changing the way in which we move around and assisting with the transition away from fossil fuels. All of these batteries move through the supply chain before ending up in businesses or people’s homes. On that basis, it’s vital we make sure the storage and handling of them is right.”

Bottle continued: “With proper precautions in place, there’s no reason wny batteries cannot be stored safely. Many warehouses are doing so already. This guidance will help others come to terms with the issue and understand how they can manage the risks. It’s a market that will only grow, so it’s important the UK has a wide range of warehouse operators equipped with the right knowledge.”

David Goss responded: “Lithium-ion batteries have been transformative, not only for consumers, but also for powering the equipment that’s essential for today’s fast and efficient logistics sector. As is the case with any technology, sensible precautions are necessary to minimise the risk of an incident.”

Goss added: “While lithium-ion batteries have proven to be safe and reliable, effective risk management requires an understanding of the potential for hazards due to the release of stored energy or chemicals. Through this collaboration, the Warehousing Association and the Material Handling Association have developed complementary guidance addressing the storage of both industrial truck traction batteries and the smaller batteries in warehouse environments.”

*Both guidance documents are available to download at https://www.ukwa.org.uk/li-ion-storage-guidance/

Practical baseline

The guidance is intended as a practical baseline for operators and is not a legal standard. It should be used alongside existing fire and Health and Safety duties, manufacturer instructions, the site fire risk assessment and any applicable insurer requirements.

Where there’s a difference between the guidance and specific manufacturer instructions, the manufacturer’s instructions always take precedence.

As an organisation, the UK Warehousing Association is the dedicated Trade Association for the vital warehousing sector, representing over 1,000 member businesses who, taken together, operate around 400 million square feet of warehousing and distribution space across thousands of locations.

The UK Material Handling Association is the UK’s Trade Association for manufacturers and suppliers of industrial and warehouse trucks, as well as associated equipment and services. Warehousing contributes over £28 billion to the UK’s economy (Gross Value Added) and employs 760,000 people across this vital sector.

The survey was issued to all large landlords (ie those owning 1,000 or more units of social stock), small landlords (those owning fewer than 1,000 units of social stock) who reported previously that they were responsible for relevant buildings and any landlord who had not responded to any previous surveys.

Of the 17,258 relevant buildings reported, 2,078 were identified as having a life-critical fire safety defect relating to the external wall system. Over 99.8% of all relevant reported buildings have had a fire risk assessment carried out on-site. 1,593 relevant buildings (ie 76.7%) are expected to be remediated within the next five years.

Remediation works are complete for a further 6.7% (139) of buildings that are awaiting confirmation from a building works assessment. Of the 2,889 buildings identified as having life-critical fire safety defects since June 2017, 811 (28.1%) have been remediated (or are now completed and awaiting a new building works assessment).

The Regulator of Social Housing will continue to monitor the performance of social landlords in remediating 11 metre-plus tall buildings and the progress they’re making against their plans.

Work “must continue at pace”

Will Perry, director of strategy at the Regulator of Social Housing, explained: “Tenants’ homes should be safe, secure and free from fire safety risks. While landlords are making progress in addressing dangerous cladding and other fire safety defects, this work must continue at pace.”

Perry continued: “We expect Boards and councillors to ensure that risks are effectively managed and remediation plans are delivered promptly. Through ongoing monitoring, inspections and engagement, we will continue to hold landlords to account and keep a strong focus on tenant safety.”

The data referred to in this publication were reported in the Q1 2026-2027 survey, which ran from 23 June to 21 July 2026, with data being reported as at 30 June 2026.

Most relevant buildings reported (ie 83.1%) have been assessed to have no outstanding or historic external wall system-related life-critical fire safety defects in any building works assessment since 14 June 2017.

Life-critical fire safety defects are defined as defects, shrinkages, faults or other failings in a building that give rise to fire safety risks identified by a fire risk appraisal of external wall construction or a fire risk assessment (or equivalent) undertaken to industry standards.

The Regulator of Social Housing advises caution in interpreting changes in data over time as they may be influenced by a change in the number of reported buildings and their assessment status at each quarter end.

Single source

The National Remediation System administered by Homes England is now the single source for building-level data for all relevant buildings over 11 metres, replacing the previous requirement for providers to submit the Building Level Survey alongside their fire risk assessment.

Collection of the Q1 2026-2027 Fire Remediation Survey figures coincided with the ongoing data collection at the building level into the National Remediation System. Landlords have been asked to input data into the National Remediation System, which may impact on figures in the fire remediation survey as data is subjected to increased review.

Following the Q2 2026-2027 survey, the Fire Remediation Survey will move to a six-monthly collection and publication. As such, the subsequent Fire Remediation Survey will be realised in Q4 2026-2027.

The new publication directly reflects the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape surrounding PFAS-containing firefighting foams and supports today’s organisations in adopting Best Practice throughout the disposal process.

The guidance has been developed for manufacturers, service companies, installers, maintenance providers, end users and waste management specialists involved in the handling of firefighting foams. It covers both fluorinated and fluorine-free foam media, including AFFF, FFFP, fluorine-free foams (F3), Class A and Class F foams as well as wetting agents and water additives.

As environmental legislation continues to tighten across Europe, the guidance explains the applicable standards and legislation governing foam disposal, including European fire protection standards, waste legislation and the latest restrictions on PFAS substances. It proceeds to outline practical measures for handling, storage, transport and disposal, thereby helping organisations to minimise environmental impact, while in parallel maintaining compliance.

A central message of the publication is that all firefighting foam should be regarded as potentially hazardous unless proven otherwise. The guidance emphasises that uncontrolled discharge to land, drains or watercourses must be avoided and that disposal should only be carried out through authorised hazardous waste routes.

Preferred disposal method

For PFAS-containing foams, high-temperature incineration at licensed facilities remains the preferred (and, in many cases, mandatory) disposal method.

The document provides practical recommendations for servicing and maintenance activities, including the containment of foam during testing, appropriate storage and transport arrangements and the recovery of waste foam from both portable extinguishers and fixed suppression systems.

Further, the new guidance encourages organisations to transition to fluorine-free foams where appropriate, remove legacy PFAS stocks and adopt closed-loop recovery systems in order to prevent environmental releases.

The guidance concludes with a simple, but important principle that underpins the entire document: all firefighting foam should be fully contained, treated as potentially hazardous and disposed of through authorised hazardous waste processes in accordance with European standards and environmental legislation.

*Euralarm’s ‘Guideline on Disposal of Firefighting Foam Media (UK and Europe)’ is available online

For most passive fire protection teams, proving it still means digging through text threads, paper sign-off sheets and undated photographs in a bid to reconstruct a timeline that should never have needed reconstructing. The install was compliant. The record just wasn’t built to answer the question on demand. As such, a routine ‘ask’ turns into hours of administration work or, worse still, a dispute.

Onetrace exists to close that gap and grew out of this exact trade. It was founded by a former fire protection company owner who lost a set of drawings on a live project and decided to digitise the process rather than risk such a scenario happening again.

That origin shows in the product: Onetrace isn’t a main contractor’s project system with fire stopping bolted on. It’s not a generic QA tool stretched to fit, either. It’s built around how passive fire teams actually evidence work.

The ‘mechanics’ are straightforward, which is precisely the point. Site teams work directly from the drawings, pinning photos, forms and approvals to the exact location as the job progresses: specification, penetration, seal type. That builds a time-stamped and connected record as the work happens, not after it.

There’s no separate reconciliation step and no reconstruction from memory. When a client, a Tier 1 or an assessor asks for evidence, one click turns that record into a branded and client-ready PDF or Excel report, sorted and ready rather than assembled under pressure.

It’s the same core record whether the job is fire protection, fire stopping, drylining, roofing, façade work, M&E, plumbing, electrical or specialist maintenance. Something that’s used by everyone: from single-site fire stopping specialists to multi-trade enterprises working across the UK.

Case Study: CLM Fireproofing

CLM Fireproofing – itself a £37 million passive fire protection specialist running simultaneous projects across commercial, residential, public sector, social housing, healthcare and defence projects – moved from carbon paper to digital years ago, but still found its systems slow, disconnected and manual, with management spending weekends building spreadsheets just to understand project productivity.

Subsequent to adopting Onetrace as its ‘single source of truth’, the business reported a 50% reduction in administration work and reporting time. As operations manager Heather Eldridge stated: “We have most definitely halved the amount of time we’re spending on discrepancy identification.”

An evidenced, structured record doesn’t just satisfy the compliance ‘ask’ when someone comes checking. It also gives back precious hours to management: hours that used to go into chasing, formatting and reconciling instead of running the business. One record, doing two jobs: proving compliance and cutting administration tasks.

For passive fire protection teams who live under audit pressure on a daily basis, that’s the shift worth making. Stop treating evidencing as a task you take on after the install and start treating it as something the install produces on its own.

*Further information is available online at www.onetrace.com

**Fire Protection Contractors: Digitising Compliance and Quality Assurance

A BSc (Honours) graduate in the subject of Fire Safety and Management, Alison is a Fellow of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management and also a Member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers. Having worked at property risk consultancy Marsh McLennan and then as a risk engineer at AIG, Alison joined the Ocado Group in late 2021.

As global head of fire safety risk management, Alison leads strategic programmes designed to integrate fire safety risk into wider operational resilience planning across international operations. The focus is very much on delivering structured and scalable frameworks that strengthen asset protection, support business continuity and enable sustainable organisational change.

In conversation with Brian, Alison concentrates on several important topics, among them the sustainability agenda and the drive to promote and realise careers for more females in the fire sector.

Having graduated in Business Studies at De Montfort University, Michael Mansfield worked in account management roles at both Lyreco UK and the TFC Group LLP. Joining asecos back in June 2024, Michael has since brought over 15 years’ worth of experience to bear in developing first-class working relationships with the company’s customer base.

On this occasion, Michael examines the fire safety-related risks posed by lithium-ion batteries and the overriding importance of product testing.

News analysis

Once again, Brian and Mark review some of the key news stories in the sector. There’s a concentration on the updated version of PAS 9980 from the British Standards Institution, the campaign underpinning Fire Door Safety Week 2026, the recent Group restructure at BAFE and the opening of registrations for the inaugural edition of Fire Safety Matters Live Scotland.

Listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast

You can listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts. All you need to do is enter the term ‘Fire Safety Matters’ into the search box of your chosen platform.

Alternatively, you can listen to the Fire Safety Matters Podcast for free online at fsmpodcast.podbean.com or via the dedicated Western Business Media/Fire Safety Matters YouTube channel by clicking here.

*If there are any specific subjects you would like to see featured in an upcoming Fire Safety Matters Podcast please do contact us. You can do so on X (formerly Twitter) by using the hashtag #FSMPodcast. Alternatively, send an e-mail direct to [email protected]

The survey, carried out to mark the launch of the British Woodworking Federation’s Fire Door Safety Week campaign – running under the headline ‘Check It, Close It: Protection Starts at the Door’ – found that 38% of Gen Z respondents aged from 18 to 29 feel safe when a fire door is wedged open. Meanwhile, almost three in every ten (ie 29%) also believe that fire doors can be safely wedged open if smoke alarms are present in the building.

In truth, a fire door will only protect people when it’s correctly installed, properly maintained and, importantly, closed. However, the survey findings suggest that many younger adults don’t fully understand this, which could put them at risk in the event of a fire.

While smoke alarms provide a warning sign for building occupants, fire doors are designed to slow the spread of fire and toxic smoke and protect escape routes. If a fire door is wedged open, fire and smoke can spread through a building and potentially compromise escape routes, which allow occupants to evacuate and Emergency Services personnel to enter the premises.

When considering the role of a fire door, 78% of ‘Baby Boomers’ (ie those aged from 62 to 80) and 93% of the ‘Silent Generation’ (people aged over 81) understand that fire doors are designed to slow the spread of fire and smoke and help people to escape a building. Such understanding is significantly lower among the Gen Z grouping, with only 40% of them stating that they understand the role of a fire door.

Despite this, younger adults are paying attention to fire doors in the buildings they use. Almost two-thirds (63%) of Gen Z respondents say they notice where fire doors are located when entering an unfamiliar building, while 59% notice the condition of such doors. This provides a firm foundation for further education around how to identify fire doors correctly and understand the crucial role they play in protecting building occupants.

Fire door education

When considering sources of fire door education, 33% of Gen Z respondents to the survey cite social media compared to other generations where the focus is on workplace training. With a rise in misinformation on social platforms, the findings clearly highlight the importance of providing younger audiences with clear and accurate information from reputable sources on how to recognise a fire door, what it’s designed to do and why it must remain closed.

The need for education is further highlighted by research identifying misconceptions around how fire doors can be identified, with 21% of those Gen Z and Millennials (ie those aged from 30 to 45) surveyed believing that a fire door is simply a door painted red and 22% of Gen Z respondents believing that a fire door is a door painted with fire-resistant paint.  

Helen Hewitt, CEO of the British Woodworking Federation, said: “The fact that more than one-in-three Gen Z adults feel safe when a fire door is wedged open is deeply concerning and creates a dangerous false sense of protection. Any wedged-open fire door cannot fulfil its life-saving role. Fire doors are designed to hold back the spread of fire and smoke, protecting emergency escape routes in order to give occupants vital time to escape and the Emergency Services time to enter a building.”

Hewitt continued: “Fire doors are not ordinary doors and should never be held or wedged open for convenience without using a correctly installed automatic door closer. Only a correctly installed, maintained and, importantly, closed fire door can stop the spread of smoke and fire.”

Further, Hewitt observed: “It’s clear that greater awareness and education is needed so that people of all ages recognise fire doors are a crucial part of the wider system of passive fire protection. By sharing accurate information and increasing visibility on the role of fire doors, we can turn recognition into understanding and action that will improve fire door safety.”

Knowledge gap

The knowledge gap also extends to what people should do when they spot a potential problem with a fire door. Almost half (48%) of Gen Z respondents believe a damaged fire door should be reported, while 45% suggest that poor maintenance of fire safety measures is a concern in public buildings.   

However, when asked why they might not report an issue relating to a fire door, respondents identified a lack of knowledge to spot a problem, uncertainty over who needs to know about the issue and assuming someone else would deal with it as the main barriers.

Insufficient knowledge is the leading barrier for Gen Z (29%) and Millennials (27%), while ‘Baby Boomers’ (30%) and the ‘Silent Generation’ (67%) are most likely to say they would not know who to contact. For Gen X, the most common barrier is assuming someone else will deal with the problem (27%).

Damage, missing components and poor maintenance can all prevent a fire door from working as intended. In the event of a fire outbreak, the consequences can be life changing. Taken together, these survey findings underline the need for greater education on fire doors, how to spot maintenance issues and, what’s more, how to report them for remediation.   

Positively, 79% of the individuals who took part in the survey believe that those responsible for installing and maintaining fire doors should have specialist qualifications or accreditations to demonstrate their skills and competence. This suggests strong public support for fire door installation and maintenance being carried out by appropriately skilled and competent professionals.

Immediate reporting

Helen Hewitt stated: “Building occupants and users should never assume that someone else will raise a concern about a fire door’s condition. Leaving a damaged, obstructed or otherwise poorly maintained fire door unreported could mean the difference between life and death in the event of a fire.”   

In addition, Hewitt explained: “If something looks wrong with a fire door – whether it’s damaged, wedged open or obstructed – then report it immediately and follow up until it’s fixed. Building owners and ‘Responsible Persons’ can help with encouraging a proactive fire safety reporting environment by making reporting processes for their properties clear, accessible and visible.”  

According to Hewitt, fire door safety depends on everyone playing their role – from building users spotting and reporting issues to landlords, building owners and ‘Responsible Persons’ ensuring competent individuals with the correct skills, knowledge and experience complete remediation work.

Supported by the British Woodworking Federation Fire Door Alliance, Fire Door Safety Week was launched by the British Woodworking Federation in 2013 to improve awareness and understanding of the vital role that fire doors play in protecting life and property and to promote industry Best Practice across all building types. This year’s survey findings underline the importance of helping people to move beyond noticing fire doors towards an understanding of how they work, why they must remain closed and what action to take if there’s a problem of any kind.

*Further information is available online at www.firedoorsafetyweek.co.uk