Fire Door Survey by
Fire Risk Consultancy Services

Everyday use of fire doors can result in slight alterations to the door and its surroundings, and this can affect the performance of the door in the event of a fire.

The key to passive fire protection, and fire compartmentation, is to contain the fire in a particular compartment or room, giving occupants enough time to escape and the fire service enough time to enter the building and tackle the fire. Designed to prevent the fire or smoke from spreading, a fire door is one of the most important fire safety products on your premises. 

Not all doors in a building need to be fire doors. A full fire door survey by a competent person will help you to identify the real problems with your fire doors, and how to rectify those particular issues in a compliant manner. Not only that, but you will then have an established asset list for the doors in your building to ensure you’re maintaining and checking the correct ones.

In short, YES.

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 applies to all buildings in England that comprise two or more domestic premises (including the residential parts of mixed-use buildings).

In addition, Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 makes it a legal requirement of the responsible person to ensure that fire-resisting doors and escape doors are correctly installed and adequately maintained in order for them to be fit for purpose. In BS 8214: 2016 and BS 9999: 2017, routine inspections of fire doors are highlighted as necessary to maintain fire safety in buildings.

These Regulations apply to all buildings in England that comprise two or more domestic premises (including the residential parts of mixed-use buildings) although there are more requirements depending on the height.  These buildings are, principally, blocks of flats (whether purpose-built or converted from another type of building, such as a house or office building), but also include blocks used for student accommodation.

The Regulations apply regardless of whether the flats are subject to a long (e.g., 99 years) lease or are rented, and regardless of whether the flats are used to accommodate the general public or a particular group of people (as in the case of, for example, sheltered housing for older people). 

• parts of the building that are used in common by the residents of two or more domestic premises (e.g. communal corridors and stairways)
• flat entrance doors
• the walls and floors that separate any domestic premises from other domestic premises, plant rooms, etc, or from parts of the building that are used in common by the occupants of two or more domestic premises
• plant rooms and other non-domestic areas of the building, such as tenant halls, offices, laundries, gymnasia and commercial premises
• external walls of the building, including doors or windows within an external wall, and attachments to an external wall (e.g. balconies).

With broad, multi-sector experience, our assessors will and will carry out checks of all fire doors and frames for property and perform a detailed check to ensure that your fire doors are safe, compliant, and effective to protect occupants against the spread of smoke and flame in the event of a fire.

We provide an independent process for evaluating the fire door against a set of defined criteria in standards, guidance documents, and procedures to determine the condition of an existing fire door.

This ensures fire compliance can not only be achieved but also maintained and recorded to satisfy Fire Service Enforcement Officers (FSEO), building control, and other external bodies.

Fire doors form an integral part of the fire protection of a building. We will always request a fire strategy plan or compartmentation drawing for a property before commencing a survey. In the absence of this information, we take a risk-based life safety approach and use fire engineering judgement to determine the assumed lines of fire resistance based on building regulations or other relevant design codes.

Many fire doors do not come with original documentation, and it is difficult to identify the manufacturer. For some doors, a risk-based approach must be taken based on the professional judgement of the assessor. If the door is of adequate thickness, and weight and appears to have the tell-tale signs of a fire door then we will inspect it as such. Every aspect is checked in detail.

Upon completion of fire door and final fire exit door inspections, a report is produced detailing the condition of each door and highlighting the areas of non-compliance. This allows organisations to prioritise maintenance activity and expenditure. This is primarily to accommodate budget constraints while demonstrating an understanding of the nature and scale of the problem, which in turn creates a register for future ongoing inspections.

A fire door should be regularly checked to ensure it functions correctly and will perform to its designed standard in the event of a fire. Periodic checks should be carried out at least once every six months although newly occupied buildings may require more frequent checks in the first year of use. Where the fire door is in high use, it is like to be more susceptible to damage and should be checked more frequently than other doors in the building. E.g., once per week/month.

If your building is residential care or nursing home (or hotel etc), to anyone who might not be able to quickly respond to or escape from a fire, 6-monthly checks are essential.

For buildings over 11m high:

Fire door checks (Communal areas)

All fire doors in communal areas of the building must be checked at least every three months.  Typically, these doors will include:

• doors to stairways and stairway lobbies
• cross-corridor doors, which sub-divide corridors
• doors to storage and electrical equipment cupboards
• doors to riser shafts, within which various services run

Flat entrance door checks;

You must use your best endeavours to undertake checks of all flat entrance fire doors at periods not exceeding 12 months. 

You must keep a record of the steps taken to comply with this requirement, including, in any case where access to a flat was not granted for this purpose during any 12-month period, the steps taken to try to gain access.

Our prices are very competitive and there are no hidden costs. Depending on the size and location of the building, a minimum half-day fee is payable. Prices start from £250 (No VAT). Email info@firerisk.co.uk for a full quotation.