This week marks Fire Door Safety Week, a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the critical role fire doors play in safeguarding people’s homes and lives.
In the event of a fire, time is everything. Fire doors are designed to buy that time – containing fire and smoke, protecting escape routes, and giving residents the chance to get to safety. Yet, despite their importance, fire doors are often treated as ordinary fixtures. Awareness campaigns like this remind us that they are, in fact, life-saving equipment, and their reliability depends on consistent care, inspection, and maintenance.
What the Regulations Require
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 place clear duties on building owners and managers to ensure fire doors are regularly checked:
These requirements are not about paperwork; they exist to ensure that, when needed most, fire doors perform as intended.
The Risks of Neglect
Regular inspections across the UK continue to highlight issues that compromise safety, such as:
Individually, these problems may appear minor, but each one can dramatically reduce a fire door’s ability to protect residents in an emergency.
Why Awareness Matters
The tragedies at Grenfell Tower and Lakanal House showed in devastating terms what happens when fire safety standards fail. They serve as stark reminders that compliance is not a tick-box exercise – it is about saving lives and maintaining trust between residents and those responsible for their safety.
Fire Door Safety Week is a timely prompt for all of us – housing associations, landlords, managing agents, RMCs, contractors, and safety professionals – to treat fire doors not as background features, but as life-saving assets that deserve proper care.
A Shared Responsibility
At Innovus, we see daily the difference that regular inspections and timely repairs make to compliance, safety, and resident confidence. But this is not work for one week alone. Fire door safety is a year-round responsibility and one that requires commitment across the whole sector.
The campaign this week is a valuable reminder that regular inspections save lives. By keeping fire doors at the forefront of our safety culture, we can protect residents, safeguard homes, and prevent future tragedies.