Fire door inspections for letting agents
One report per building, numbered the way your own records are, so nothing has to be matched up afterwards.
Get a priceAgents who manage a few dozen flats across Ealing usually have the same problem. The doors are in forty different states and nobody has a list.
We start by asking for the list you do have. Addresses, how many flats in each, which are let and which are empty.
Doing it building by building
Each building gets its own report. Flat 1 in the report is Flat 1 in your system. You can file it against the property and find it again in two years.
Empty flats are easy. We ask for the key and go in. A flat with a tenant needs a few minutes of their time, so we write to them first or work from the notice you send.
Between tenancies is the best moment. The flat is empty and nobody is waiting for us to finish.
The doors we see in agent portfolios
The flat front door is the one that varies most. Somebody swapped it years ago, and the replacement may be a good certified door or a lightweight door that only looks like one.
Inside a shared house, bedroom doors have usually been through several tenants. Lost screws from the closers. A lock changed for one with a bigger hole. A hook fixed to the frame so the door can be held open.
In common hallways we find doors that lost their seals when a new carpet went down, and doors that now drag because the floor level has changed.
Who is responsible
For the shared areas of a building with more than one home, the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 is whoever has control of those areas. In most buildings that is the landlord, the freeholder or the managing agent acting for them.
The Fire Safety Act 2021 confirmed that flat entrance doors have to be considered as well, even though each one belongs to a flat.
Shared houses can also need a council licence, and licence conditions can mention fire doors. Ask the council for your borough if your house needs one.
What the report looks like
The front page of each building report is a tally. How many doors, how many passed, how many failed.
Each door then has its own entry with a photo and the reason it failed. Flat 6 might say the closer arm is loose and the bottom seal is missing. Flat 7 might say the door has no label and a letterbox cut through the middle.
Doors we could not get to go at the end with the reason, so you know which flats to chase. When a landlord rings to ask why a repair costs what it does, send them that entry.
Cost
A small building starts from around £250 plus VAT.
If you have several buildings in one part of Ealing, we can plan them in one run. Most of the cost is the drive from Luton and the number of doors, so grouping helps.
Send the number of buildings and a rough flat count for each. We reply with a price the same day.
Questions we get asked
Can you inspect a flat while the tenant is in?
Yes, if they know we are coming. We need a few minutes at the front door and at any internal door you have asked us to look at.
Do you inspect inside flats or only the front doors?
Whichever you ask for. Most agents start with the front doors. In a shared house the bedroom and kitchen doors matter as much.
Who pays if a tenant has damaged a door?
That is between you, the landlord and the tenant. We record the fault and the state of the door. Who caused it is not our call.
Send the postcode and a rough number of doors. We will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price