Introduction

A fire door is a door designed to resist the spread of fire and smoke for a specified period and to help protect escape routes and shared areas within a building.

Current standards for newly fitted doors say that the entrance door to your flat must give 30 minute resistance to fire and smoke (be rated FD30). This helps prevent fire spreading between your flat and the communal areas and escape routes.

Communal doors in blocks of flats (such as doors in stairwells, corridors and shared entrances) are also fire doors. They must be self-closing and give 30 or 60 minute resistance to fire and smoke (be rated FD30 or FD60).

If the front door to your flat opens onto communal areas, it should be checked as part of your building’s regular fire risk assessment. Your landlord, their agents or other responsible person should do this.

Regulations in 2022 brought in additional obligations on landlords about fire doors.

In all buildings containing 2 or more flats that have communal parts through which residents would need to evacuate in the case of an emergency, residents should be given information every 12 months (or as soon as possible if new) that:

• fire doors should be kept shut when not in use
• residents or their guests should not tamper with self-closing devices
• residents should report any fault or damage immediately to the responsible person

In buildings above 11 metres the responsible person must:

• use “best endeavours” to check all flat entrance fire doors at least every 12 months
• carry out checks of any fire doors in communal areas at least every 3 months

How checks are carried out

Government guidance on the regulations say that checks should be simple and basic visual checks, without the need for a specialist or tools.

It says that with appropriate instruction, caretakers, managing agents, housing officers and maintenance personnel should be able to do them in the course of routine visits to the building.