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Flawed government advice has delayed vital work being done to replace unsafe fire doors, Inside Housing has learned.
Industry sources have said misleading guidance led to landlords cancelling orders, sending back deliveries and refusing payments for fully certified fire doors.
At the end of July, the government issued Advice Note 16, intended to help landlords to replace fire doors.
It stated that before a replacement fire door could be fitted, the landlord needed to have test evidence that the door resists fire resistance and smoke control from both sides.
This is a standard commonly applied to ‘composite’ fire doors, a relatively new kind of door without historical test data to back it up. Composite fire doors were used in Grenfell Tower.
However, the industry has never applied it to non-composite doors such as timber or metal doors.
Mike Wood, a fire safety consultant, told Inside Housing: “For timber doors, there’s a protocol established by test evidence, that if you test opening into the furnace – for a symmetrical door leaf – that’s a worse orientation than opening away from the furnace. So you test on that side.”
Inside Housing understands that some landlords which were buying replacement fire doors cancelled orders, sent back deliveries or refused payments after discovering that the doors did not have test data for both sides.
A month later, the government issued new guidance in Advice Note 17. This clarified that Note 16 “applies to composite doors only”.
Some in the fire door industry believe that the incorrect advice given in the previous note was a result of the government not having enough experts on fire doors advising it.
Fire door safety experts have held numerous meetings with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), but Inside Housing understands that some feel their advice has been ignored.
Mr Wood added: “The government has to be far more responsive to the way the industry works. They can’t just drop a bombshell like that. What they don’t seem to realise is, they create doubt and confusion which hangs around.”
Charlie Conley, head of asset management at Flagship Group, said: “There is a lack of clarity on what products are safe. We can’t say for certain there aren’t going to be some more issues with fire doors further down the line.
“We want to make sure that we are spending the money wisely and if there is this uncertainty then that is something which is of huge concern.
“We don’t want to be spending tenants’ money on things that aren’t fit for purpose and are also potentially putting them at risk by putting something in there which is not going to be safe.”
Fire doors used in Grenfell Tower were first discovered to have failed safety tests in March, resisting flame for just half the 30 minutes set by guidance.
Despite then-communities secretary Sajid Javid insisting at the time that there was "no evidence" of a systemic issue, doors from five suppliers have since failed tests with 20 more test results to be announced.
This means potentially hundreds of thousands of fire doors across England require replacing.
In the days following the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017, Inside Housing launched the Never Again campaign to call for immediate action to implement the learning from the Lakanal House fire, and a commitment to act – without delay – on learning from the Grenfell Tower tragedy as it becomes available.
One year on, we have extended the campaign asks in the light of information that has emerged since.
Here are our updated asks:
GOVERNMENT
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
LANDLORDS