‘Legacy of neglect' means fire doors might not stop another Grenfell

Failures of inspection and maintenance means many fire doors would ineffectively halt the spread of a large blaze in flats or office buildings.
Hannah McKay/Reuters

Millions of fire doors designed to provide lifesaving protection to residents and workers could be virtually useless because of a “legacy of neglect,” ministers were warned today.

Iain McIlwee, chief executive of the British Woodworking Federation, said “deep-rooted” failures of inspection and maintenance meant many doors would do little to halt the spread of a major blaze in flats or office buildings.

It follows the disclosure that an undamaged door taken from Grenfell Tower resisted flames for just 15 minutes in police tests — compared with the 30 minutes’ protection they were designed to provide. In an email to Communities Secretary Sajid Javid seen by the Standard, Mr McIlwee described the problem as “alarming” and called for a national fund to fix and replace doors.

“There have been skills issues that have undermined installation and a real legacy of neglect when it comes to inspection and maintenance. I am afraid that the problem is very deep-rooted,” he wrote. “I agree we shouldn’t panic but we should absolutely be concerned.”

Members of the federation, which represents manufacturers and installers, make about three million fire doors a year in Britain under a voluntary certification system. But Mr McIlwee said just one adaptation to a correctly installed door could drastically compromise its effectiveness. For example if a workman made a hole in a door that was not properly repaired it could easily allow flames to spread. A recent random sample inspection of 31 buildings with 677 doors found more than 2,500 faults with them, Mr McIlwee told Mr Javid.

Dame Judith Hackitt is carrying out an independent review of building re-gulations and fire safety in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, in which 71 died.

Mr McIlwee wrote that while this is likely to improve future safety, it will not address fixing existing inadequacies: “This legacy of neglect of fire doors in the public, third and private sector is alarming and whilst the Hackitt review can look at the process, I do not think resourcing of this legacy work is in their current remit ... It is imperative that we see the Treasury making an allocation for such potentially life-critical work.”

He suggested a Building Safety Fund, similar to the Pension Protection Fund for staff deprived of retirement income by a failure on the part of employers. It could be paid for via an extra levy collected with insurance premium tax, and it could also be used to manage litigation should a third party be liable.

The Ministry of Communities said: “We are conducting further tests on fire doors and we will report back to Parliament by the end of April. Independent experts have advised the risks to public safety remain low.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT