FREE tenancy agreement
FREE landlord softwareJoseph Draper was fined £115,000 for failing to comply with the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order 2005. Draper admitted the lapses in the terrace house which provided accommodation on 5 floors with a total number of 7 bedrooms.
Draper admitted some of the doors did not have enough fire protection such as self closing protection or smoke seals.
Draper also faces insurance claims of up to £1.5 million, building costs of £500,000 and legal fees of £100,000.
The case does illustrate the dilemma for many landlords with HMOs. Fire safety doors may be needed to comply with regulations; but how often are they then just kept propped open totally negating their intended purpose due to their total impracticality.
Any views about the use of fire doors in HMOs post them below.
Landlord insurance - instant quotes
Posts
5 comments:
Electricians don't help either!
I had a firm called Black Notley Electricians (Braintree, Essex) fit two wired smoke detectors, a brand new, uptodate consumer unit and issue an electrical safety certificate and their employee managed to screw that up.
Turns out he didn't wire the downstairs detector properly and the battery backup eventually drained, thus causing the unit to bleep.
I only found out about this after Black Notley electricians sent a nice guy round to investigate. He disabled the bleeping unit and then arranged to go back to sort it out.
Unfortunately, and this is the kicker, the job wasn't straightforward enough for them and now they've just left it such that the smoke detector is disabled and unusable!
The tenant is now forced to using her old battery operated detector, which to my mind is unacceptable after I've paid so much money to have fire and electrical standards brought up in the property.
I rang the company about this and gave them an opportunity to do the right thing and basically it seems they are unwilling to do anything more to resolve this. If they'd agreed to remediate the problem for a reduced fee I would've taken them up on that, in other words, we SHARE the cost of the remediation, but no such luck!
So in summary, it's all very well and good a landlord trying to do what's right and necessary, but when companies turn out to be cowboys, where does the buck stop? It should stop with the cowboys if the landlord can prove matters were taken in hand.
"The case does illustrate the dilemma for many landlords with HMOs. Fire safety doors may be needed to comply with regulations; but how often are they then just kept propped open totally negating their intended purpose due to their total impracticality."
Is this actually a legal dilemma for the landlord? If he or she provides the required fire protection and the tenants abuse it (by propping doors open etc.) how can the landlord be held responsible for that?
All down to regular inspections I suspect Doug - if you can record that there was no propped open doors on each visit then you have carried out due diligence, if they were propped open you will doubtless have to show that you acted with due care and diligence in resolving the issue.
Failing that lock them! (PS last comment is a joke for avoidance of doubt!!)
Locking doors is no joke. All our fire doors, in a block of 100 flats, are electromagnetically locked and only release when the fire alarm is activated. This has the agreement of the local fire officer and the fire risk assessor.
Fire doors are brilliant. They save lives and they save property damage. I know of an HMO landlord whose tenant had his room set on fire by arsonists. There was very little damage beyond the room. If you have a building over multiple floors and a single means of escape then it's absolutely critical to the safety of those above the ground floor that the fire doors are in place and working correctly.
BTW some of you are getting confused between fire exit doors and fire doors designed to provide compartmentation.
Post a Comment