Fire door inspection for shared houses

Bedroom doors, kitchen doors, stair doors. Checked before the council, or a tenant, asks.

Shared houses wear out doors faster than anything else we inspect.

Five or six adults, each with their own key and their own habits. Doors get slammed, wedged, kicked and re-hung.

A steel hinge with its four screws on a fire door

Who has to do what

If a house is let to five or more people from more than one household, it is a licensable HMO. Smaller shared houses can still be covered by council schemes. Buckinghamshire Council is the one to ask about licences in High Wycombe.

For the building itself, the duty to keep escape routes safe falls under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 where the house is a shared one. The details depend on the layout.

We will tell you what condition your doors are in. Your licence conditions tell you what you need.

The usual faults

A bedroom door with its lock changed, where the hole is now twice the size it should be.

A closer that a tenant took off because it banged at night.

A kitchen door held open with a shoe.

A hinge with two screws where there should be four.

Paint over the seals. A big gap at the bottom, from a door that was planed to clear a thick carpet.

A closed fire door leaf seen along the frame

Getting into the rooms

Tenants have to be told. We give you a short notice you can forward, and we ask for a day and a time.

A shared house has 8 to 12 doors, and it is quick when the rooms are open. When they are locked, we come back.

What you get

A report with each door, its photos, and what to do. It goes in the house file next to the gas certificate and the electrical report.

If you let several houses we can do two in a day. Tell us the postcodes.

Fire risk assessments

An HMO may need one. It is a separate piece of work. The door report will help whoever does it, but it does not replace it.

Questions we get asked

Does every room need a fire door?

Not always. It depends on the house and your licence. The fire risk assessment settles it.

Can I do the checks myself?

You can look. A gauge and a torch will find the obvious faults. What you will not have is a report that shows each door in writing, with photos.

Also useful

Areas we cover

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