Flats over shops and restaurants
A commercial kitchen downstairs and somebody asleep upstairs, with one door between them.
Get a priceWalk down Clarence Street and look above the shop signs.
Curtains. A bike on a window sill. People live over the takeaways and the phone shops, and most of them get out by a narrow stair at the side or the back of the unit.
The one door that decides it
Between the shop and the stair up to the flats there is usually one door. Often it is the old kind, a hollow panel with a letterbox gap at the bottom, painted the same cream as the wall.
I look at that one before anything else. Fire in a shop at night goes unseen for a good while, and smoke that gets past a door like that is on the stairs before the people in bed have noticed.
On site we find out what the door actually is, whether the hinges are sound, whether the frame has been cut about and whether it shuts and latches by itself. Then we look at the wall around it. Pipes and cables often go through right next to the frame with a hole left round them.
Why these get missed
The shop has a lease. The flats may be on another. The freeholder could be a pension fund or a family abroad.
Nobody owns the stair door in practice. The tenant says it is the landlord, the landlord says it is the agent, and the agent was only ever asked to collect the rent.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 can put duties on all three, and people who share control of a building are expected to work together. One report they can all read helps.
Kitchens below
Grease gets on everything. Seals go hard and closers slow down.
The back door gets wedged open because the kitchen is hot. Then the closer comes off the arm. A kitchen door on an escape route that stays open all shift is not doing anything.
We can come before opening. Monday morning, before the first delivery, is far easier than a visit in the middle of service.
Offices upstairs
Some of the older buildings around the Market Place have offices above rather than flats. Fewer people asleep, more doors held open with a fire extinguisher or a box of paper.
Access control on a fire door needs a look too. A maglock or keypad can be fine. Or the installer has cut a slot through the strip for the cable.
What to send us
The address and which units you control. A key or a name at the shop. The quiet hours.
If a fire risk assessment or an insurer's letter mentions the doors, send that too. It is usually what started the whole thing.
If we find faults
Our own crew does door repairs in and around London at a fixed price agreed before anyone starts. You can also take the report to your own carpenter.
If the shop is not yours, we can still inspect the stair doors as far as we can get to them. Anything we could not reach goes in the report as not reached, so nobody thinks it was checked when it was not.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
Get a price