Fire door inspection in Southall
Flats above the shops, community halls and shared houses.
Get a priceThe Broadway is the long spine of Southall, and many of the buildings along it have something above the shop. Flats, offices, storerooms.
That is where a lot of Southall's fire door questions start.
Above the shops
On the Broadway and the streets off it, the common arrangement is a ground floor shop and one or two floors above, reached by a side door and a stair.
Three doors do the work. The street door at the foot of the stair. The door between the shop and the stair, if there is one. And the door at the top into each flat or office.
The shop door is the one we find in the worst state. It carries stock, it gets boxes leaned against it, and it is often fitted with a bolt on the shop side because the owner wants it secure at night. A bolt on the wrong side of a door that has to open for escape is something we put in the report.
The usual question here is who looks after the stair door. If the shop and the flat above are owned by two different people, nobody may have thought about it. Settle it, and write it down.
Halls and places of worship
Southall has plenty of community buildings. Halls, temples, churches and clubs, many of them in buildings that were put to a different use first.
The same law applies to a hall as to an office. Whoever is in charge of the premises has the duties of the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. In a community building that is often a trustee or a volunteer committee.
We do not expect volunteers to know what a good fire door looks like. We check each door, write down what we find and give you something you can show the committee.
Shared houses
There are many houses in the area that are let by the room. If a house has five or more people from more than one household, it needs a mandatory HMO licence from the council. Smaller shared houses may be covered by other schemes, and the council can tell you.
Bedroom doors in these houses take a hard time. Closers get taken off, locks are swapped, and the doors are held open with whatever is to hand.
Newer blocks near the station
There are newer blocks of flats near Southall station and the canal. For a block over 11 metres, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 set the three-monthly and yearly checks, and a record of them has to be kept.
How the day goes
We tell you in advance which doors we want to see and roughly how long. For shared houses and flat blocks we can work from a list of times given to residents.
Photos of every door go into the report along with the measurements and notes. It is written for the person who has to decide what to do about it.
Repairs
We inspect. Our own crew does repairs, so whether we can take yours on depends on the job. If we cannot, take the report to any competent carpenter.
Where we are
We are a Luton company and have no office in Southall.
Questions we get asked
Is a mandatory HMO licence the same as a fire door inspection?
No. A licence comes from the council. An inspection is a record of what condition the doors are in.
Our hall has no records for the doors. Where do we start?
With an inspection. That gives you a list of every door, what state it is in and what needs fixing first.
Send the postcode and a rough number of doors. We will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price