Fire door inspection in Twickenham
Pubs, student lets near St Mary's, and flats on the way to the stadium.
Get a priceWe will not book Twickenham on an England home match day if we can help it.
You already know why. The roads fill, the trains fill, and for anyone with a pub or a restaurant near the ground it is the last day you want a man with a clipboard wandering around.
Any other day is fine.
Pubs, bars and rooms upstairs
A few of the pubs round here have letting rooms or a manager's flat above the bar.
Guests asleep upstairs means the stair doors come first. A fire in the kitchen or the cellar at two in the morning, and a guest who has never seen the building.
Cellars get forgotten. We look at the hatch and at the door at the foot of the cellar stair. Then the door between the kitchen and the corridor, which is propped open with a crate by the second hour of a busy shift.
A pub is a workplace, so the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies. Whoever runs it is the person to ask about the doors.
Shared houses near St Mary's
St Mary's University is up at Strawberry Hill, and shared houses are spread around the streets near the station.
Sharers can be hard on a house. Closers come off because someone got fed up with the noise. Locks get changed. A door is taken off to get a sofa in and rehung by somebody's dad.
Bedroom doors that open onto the stairs and the kitchen door are the priority. Our HMO page goes into more detail. The summer holidays are the quiet time to do it.
Flats in the town
York Street and the streets around the station have a mix of older buildings with flats over shops and purpose-built blocks. Heath Road is much the same.
In the older ones it is worth asking who owns what. The shop might be on one lease and the flats on another. It is common for the fire doors on the stairs to fall between the two.
In the blocks, the usual suspects are slack closers, damaged seals and flat doors swapped by a resident over the years.
Riverside and the older houses
Around Church Street and along the river the buildings get older and prettier. Some will be listed, and much of this part of Twickenham is a conservation area.
That does not excuse a door from working. It can make the fix more complicated, so speak to Richmond Council before anyone changes a listed door.
Remember that a panelled door voids any rating, so a plain certified doorset is what we would point you towards. Where the building makes that awkward, talk to us and to the conservation officer together.
Whose patch this is
Twickenham is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. London Fire Brigade enforces fire safety here. Whitton, Strawberry Hill and St Margarets are all in the same borough, which keeps it simple.
Booking
We come from Luton, across the M25 and in. We have no office here. Tell us what days work and avoid the rugby and we will find a slot.
Questions we get asked
Do you work in pubs while they are open?
We would rather come before opening. It only takes a few minutes at each door, but a quiet building is easier for everyone.
My HMO has only four tenants. Am I covered?
The mandatory licence applies at five or more, but your council may have additional licensing, and your fire safety duties do not depend on a licence. Ask Richmond Council about your address.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
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