Enhanced management no substitute for care home door self-closers

From @info4fire

A care home has failed to establish that management arrangements could compensate for the absence of self-closers on bedroom doors, according to a determination under the Fire Safety Order by the secretary of state.

The care home argued that it could compensate for the absence of self-closers – part of the building’s design which was accepted by approved inspectors in 2003 – with enhanced staff intervention procedures, including the closing of any open bedroom doors in the event of a fire.

The secretary of state, however, on the advice of the government’s chief fire and rescue adviser, ruled that the fire and rescue enforcing authority was right to insist on appropriate self-closing or hold-open devices on the doors, in order to provide quick and safe evacuation in the event of danger.

The determination also rejects the approach taken by the responsible person in selecting parts of different standards to justify their approach.

“Standards are written to provide a comprehensive assessment of the risk and identify adequate protection measures for a defined risk,” says the chief fire and rescue adviser in the determination. “To take sections of differing standards and use them to form one assessment is an erroneous approach, as individual sections in guidance documents rely on assumptions in other sections of that document which may differ from other guidance.”

The care home’s case was also rejected in spite of smoke flow zone modelling which tried to suggest that smoke conditions would be tenable – even if a bedroom fire door were left open.

“The responsible person should have recognised there is established good practice designed to provide adequate protection in this situation: the use of self-closing devices on the bedroom fire doors,” concludes the advice. “This is proportionate and its use is likely to enable persons to evacuate the premises as quickly and safely as possible.

“It is therefore my view that the requirement to fit appropriate self-closing devices to the bedroom fire doors is necessary to safeguard the safety of relevant persons, and is the appropriate technical solution for remedying the established failure to comply with article 14(2)(b) of the Order.”