“Enhanced staff intervention procedures” no substitute for fire door closers

A care home has failed to establish that management and staff arrangements could compensate for the absence of self-closers on bedroom doors.

However, the secretary of state,on the advice of the government’s chief fire and rescue adviser, has 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 disagreement ocurred between the responsible person and the enforcing authority as to whether self-closing devices need to be fitted to bedroom doors to allow safe evacuation by safeguarding the means of escape, or whether a management solution can deliver an equivalent level of safety. 

The enforcing authority was of the opinion that self-closing devices fitted to the bedroom doors are required to provide a suitable and sufficient method of satisfying the requirement given in article 14 (2) (b) of the Order. This would allow any fire in a bedroom to be contained to the room of origin and therefore adequately safeguard the means of escape.

The responsible person’s view is that a management solution can be provided sufficient to comply with this article. This would involve staff responding to the fire alarm and closing the bedroom doors in the event of a fire alarm activation.

The 'Determination' states "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.”

"Using staff to ensure doors are closed in an emergency situation is not an action that can be relied upon, so automatic devices must be used.”

Self-closing devices remove the need for people to have to shut the door when evacuating a room on fire. They also ensure that fire doors in rooms not immediately affected by the fire are shut and so provide a barrier to further fire spread.