Fire door inspection in New Malden
Restaurants on the High Street, flats above them, and offices near the A3.
Get a priceNew Malden's High Street smells of good barbecue.
It has the biggest Korean community in Britain, and the restaurants, grocers and cafes along the road are a big part of why people come. Above many of those units there are flats.
That combination is what we would want to look at first. A busy kitchen below. Bedrooms above. Probably one narrow stair.
The door between the kitchen and the stair
Go to the back of a restaurant and find how the flats upstairs get out.
In some buildings the stair has its own street door. In others the staff corridor and the residents' stair meet at one door, and that door has to be a proper fire door, which it is not if the seals are caked in grease and the closer has gone.
It is hot in a kitchen, so the door gets wedged open, and a closer that is never used stiffens while the brush seal fills up with grease.
We can visit before service. Ten minutes at each door is what we are after, and nobody has to stop cooking.
Flats along the main roads
Purpose-built low-rise flats sit along Burlington Road and off Malden Road, along with newer blocks near the station.
For most of these, the same few faults come up. Closers that do not finish the job. Letterboxes that were never rated. Flat doors replaced by a leaseholder who bought something that looked right online.
That last one deserves care. A new front door can look fine and be useless, and the leaseholder usually has no idea. We check what was fitted and who supplied it, if the label tells us.
Offices near the A3
Some of the commercial buildings around the Malden junction and Burlington Road are office space. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 somebody has to be in charge of fire safety at work, and the doors come under that.
The classic faults in offices are simple ones. Wedges, because the door is annoying. Closers slackened because staff moaned. Access control added with no thought for what it did to the door.
We can go round early, or between meetings, so people can carry on working.
Houses of multiple occupation
Plenty of 1930s semis in the area are let room by room. These houses were not designed for it, so the doors on the landing and the kitchen door take on a job they were never built for.
If yours has five or more people from two or more households, you need a mandatory HMO licence. Kingston Council can tell you if any further licensing applies to your road.
The area
New Malden is in the Royal Borough of Kingston. Motspur Park is on the edge of it and part of that area falls into Merton, which makes no difference to the door, only to the council you might need to ring.
London Fire Brigade covers both.
Getting a price
Tell us the postcode, how many doors, and the type of building. If it is a restaurant, tell us your quietest time of day.
We come down from Luton. We have no office in New Malden, and when we can we will fit your visit in with other work around Kingston.
Questions we get asked
Can you inspect outside opening hours?
Yes, early starts are fine. Tell us what suits and we will work round it.
The flats upstairs are not mine. Who should book this?
Whoever controls the shared parts. If that is not clear, get the shop tenant and the freeholder talking first, because the fire safety duty can sit with more than one of them.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
Get a price